---

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

Part II

While Cordelia headed directly for her closets, Buffy called the library to leave a message. Not a major alert, not yet, just a general heads-up to let them know that something was in the works, and they should get together once classes ended and await further news. Cordelia could tell from Buffy’s side of the conversation that she was talking to Tucker (creepy little ferret, but he was fast becoming their expert on demon psychology, even if he was a total waste when it came to actual fighting); he took the message and promised he would pass it on to Giles, and Buffy ended the call.

“I don’t like leaving them in the dark,” Buffy said as she set the phone down. “Once they start spreading the word, and can’t reach Xander and Willow … I wish there was another way.”

“If you can come up with one, feel free to let me know,” Cordelia answered. “Right now I’m thinking we’ll put together a text message with all the on-point info, and shoot it to Nancy’s cell phone when we’re ready for them to come get you.” Aside from Buffy and Cordelia, Nancy was the only one of the group with her own phone. “Something before then, too, I guess,” she added after a moment’s consideration. “A little warning to load up on weapons and be ready to move quick. They need to understand that something’s coming, but we don’t want them knowing too much too soon.”

“They’re going to be major pissed-off when this is over,” Buffy predicted. “But I guess you’re right: if your plan works, we can always say, ‘Hey, it worked!’ And if it doesn’t … if it doesn’t, them being mad will be the least of our problems.” She shook her head sharply, then looked to Cordelia. “Okay, clothes. So, what have you got for me?”

“Your basic black, some more black, and hey! how about something in black? Here, try ’em on.” She tossed over the selected apparel.

Buffy snagged the garments out of the air, separated them for a quick, expert inspection, then looked back to Cordelia. “Pedal pushers?” she asked.

“Long enough for your stubby little legs,” Cordelia pointed out. “Just tuck them into your boots. And turn up the cuffs of the turtleneck if your arms won’t reach through the sleeves. I want to finish here so we can move on to picking weapons.”

“I’m not that much shorter than you,” Buffy retorted. “Lighten up. You said your mother has a wig?”

“We’ll get to that.” Cordelia gestured toward the vanity table, and the comprehensive cosmetics selection arrayed there. “Right now, let’s do something about your face.”

“These guys aren’t fashion police, Cordy. And I’ll be trying not to be seen, and moving fast and fighting if they spot me.” She shook her head. “Let’s focus on essentials here.”

And once again, the gulf yawned between them. For the life of her, Cordelia could never decide if it was because Buffy had changed, or because she had. The girl still fought, still had no shortage of grit and courage and self-reliance … but she just wasn’t quite the same anymore, she no longer saw the world through a Slayer’s eyes. The hunter-predator perspective that came so automatically now to Cordelia seemed to have deserted her predecessor.

“It’s all essential,” she said evenly; this wasn’t the time to start going off on her allies. “You don’t give up any advantages, not with these stakes or these odds. If anybody catches a glimpse of you, they need to think they’re seeing the Slayer. Anything that helps make that happen, helps us. So I’m not worried about making you look good, I just want you to look like me. Which, okay, same thing, but you get my point.”

“Whatever.” Buffy sat at the vanity table. “Just, can we make it quick? We don’t have unlimited daylight here.”

Cordelia made no answer, concentrating on the task before her as a distraction from the aggression she could feel steadily mounting. Artful shading to make the face seem longer; accentuate the cheekbones; extend the lip-lines to widen the mouth; low-contrast around the eyes, don’t draw attention to how much lighter they were than her own. That last was a delicate balance, more misdirection than camouflage; only so much could be done, and honestly, if anybody looked that close, they were sunk anyhow. Besides which, heavy eye make-up and individual combat simply didn’t go together.

Maybe she was being too picky, but she didn’t think so. When it came right down to it, you could never predict just how much difference one little detail could make …

*               *               *

It turned on a speck of mascara. Aura’s: Cordelia used a much smoother blend, and applied it with endlessly-honed skill. That night, however, she had let Aura show her a new effect in the ladies’ room at the Bronze, and liked it enough that she allowed it to stay when they emerged, though she was already calculating how to improve and personalize the look.

Then the stunningly handsome stranger had crossed her vision, and cosmetic enhancement was instantly forgotten. “Hello, salty goodness,” she observed; and then, as much to herself as to her fawning retinue, added, “Call 9-1-1, ’cause that boy’s gonna need some serious help when I’m done with him.”

Confident words, but it almost stopped right there, ended before it could begin. In clear violation of the natural order, Hunk-o-Rama went straight to Buffy … who still had Owen hanging onto her, so that flake-girl was suddenly bracketed by two hot guys at once, leaving Cordelia to moan, “Why is this happening to me?”

It was as if the entire universe was suddenly conspiring against her. She stewed for a few minutes in unaccustomed frustration, and was about to move on when an ordinary blink dropped a crumb of Aura’s cheap mascara into her eye. Barely, she felt it land on the eyelid and it could just as easily have dropped free, but it went in and she spent three or four seconds extracting it, just enough to keep her where she could see Mister Broody Leather making his way out the door.

And she went after him, of course. When opportunity knocks, you jump on that puppy and ride it for all it’s worth. (The universe was back on track. Yes!)

The rest of it followed from that. His attempt to brush her away, meaningless against her determination. Her automatic self-check in the reflective glass of a shop window as she strode along beside him, and the sinking-stomach realization that she was the only one there. Angel’s halting confession of his true nature, followed later by the revelation of his mission to watch and assist Miss Psychotic Muffet in her slay-destiny.

Her own eventual involvement — reluctant, but inevitable — with the group attached to Angel’s mission. Her forceful support of Angel when the others finally learned his undead status, without which support they never would have accepted him (although it was also possible that Buffy’s objections sprang as much from his association with Cordelia as from his bloody back-history). The later, closer, but briefer involvement with Xander: there was more to him than most people ever suspected, but the two of them had made the attempt only because each was in love with someone else … and, impossible or not, in the end they had abandoned it to resume pursuit of their original desires.

Despite the arrogant assurance she displayed to the world around her, Cordelia occasionally allowed herself to recognize that she wasn’t the exact center of the universe, and had privately wondered just what intersections of destiny and personality had directed her and Angel toward one another. They were both gorgeous, and both — never say it aloud — lonely, but that seemed to be the only things they had in common. Though she was careful never to remind her classmates either of her relative youth or of the brain that had allowed her to skip a grade before she wised up to social necessities, she was fifteen years old; he was sixteen times fifteen. He was supernatural, and dead; she was human (perfect, but otherwise normal), and alive. He was tasked by fate to aid the Slayer; her own destiny, though doubtless extraordinary, did not involve up-close-and-personal with demon ickiness. The instant he had showed her his true face should have been the instant she erased him from her life.

Besides which, if anything was going to happen, you would expect it to be between him and Buffy.

Much later, when their partnership was as much destiny as heart, Cordelia had ‘teasingly’ commented, I bet you’re like this with all the Slayers. Angel had looked startled, then thoughtful, then somber, before replying, No. I’ve only worked with two, and the other one didn’t measure up to you.

That was all he would say at the time; other hints of detail would take months to emerge, and even now there was no way to be certain she had the true picture. The overall impression, though, was that he had compared Buffy (mystical warrior, but ceaselessly complaining about it and determined to retain her status as a teen-aged airhead) to Cordelia (already queen of the social jungle, but joining the struggle à la Hellmouth by her own free choice), and found the contrast not at all in Buffy’s favor.

Still, that left the original question: with all the obvious obstacles, what had drawn the two of them together?

On his side, it had perhaps started with protectiveness. He had hidden the truth from all around him for nearly a century, and now here was someone who knew. One girl in all the world with whom he didn’t have to pretend, so naturally he found himself wanting to watch out for her whenever he could. Not that she needed help (mostly), but maybe being sure she was safe was his need.

On her side … harder to say. Why had she let him inside her defenses? In the beginning, it had been mostly annoyance. She had caught him ‘stalking’ her, challenged him on it, blasted him with the full force of her razor-edged disdain … and it had meant nothing to him. Huh? Nobody was immune to the tongue of Cordelia Chase! But, as she had gradually come to realize, this was someone whose personal sense of guilt ran so deep, lesser insults had little effect.

By the time she reached that conclusion, however, they were both hooked already. Sparring had become conversation, conversation had become sharing … She had emphatically not-invited him into her home, but there was no counting the nights they had talked, he in the tree outside her bedroom, she lounging in the window seat. In ways they had never tried to analyze, they could be themselves with one another, where it would have been impossible with anyone else.

Only, the situation itself was impossible. No getting away from that.

Thus, her and Xander. Even if it hadn’t been obvious already, that one all by itself showed just how much Angel’s companionship had changed her. Guy of your dreams turns out to be unavailable? no problem, clear set of protocols for dealing with the situation. Cut him dead (whoops, too late, some breathy little whore did that a couple of centuries ago), convince him and yourself and everybody else that he was a total loser who never deserved you to begin with, and latch onto the highest-status trophy male in sight for your rebound guy.

Right. “Trophy”, “Xander” … two words that the laws of nature would never place in the same sentence, unless “World’s Greatest Dork” figured in there somewhere. By that time, though, he’d saved her life a few times (she’d returned the favor, of course; if she was going to mix it up with the supernatural, she meant to pull her weight), and his hopeless yearning for Buffy matched only too clearly her own recognition that she had no conceivable future with Angel. So, after too many nights spent redirecting their frustration into insult marathons at the Bronze, Cordelia had reached across the distance between them, pulled Xander to her, and kissed him.

It wasn’t desire. It wasn’t even need. But, for a short while, it was something, and they held onto it until they could both see it had no more to give them.

They had never spoken of it to any of the others while it was going on. Angel had known, however, either through secret observation or just by smelling their pheromones, and somehow Buffy had come to realize it also. When Cordelia and Xander had shared a look after talking Marcie down from the clock tower after the invisible girl’s revenge plans had fallen apart, and then seen Buffy and Angel share a See, I told you look of their own … it had ended in that moment, with mutual understanding and no regrets. Without even words; one moment, they had a ‘whatever the hell you want to call it’, the next, the line stopped at ‘friends’, and that was that. They weren’t what the other two believed them to be, and it was time to stop pretending otherwise to themselves.

A captured glance. A moment’s impulse. A fleck of mascara. It could be anything, anything at all, and never with a hint of warning.

*               *               *

It took time for the two of them to work out the matter of weapons. For Cordelia that seldom posed a problem — a Slayer’s most formidable weapon was her own body, the rest was trim — but Buffy’s situation required some thought. How much could she carry, quietly, and yet still be able to access it in a hurry when the time came? What should she have with her to pass on to Willow? What would best allow them to fight their way out OR make a stand while the rest of the Slay Friends fought their way in? And, from the wish list thus determined, which did Cordelia have readily at hand?

In the end they armed Buffy lightly with a collection of stakes and a ninja-to (the short, straight blade wasn’t as good as would have been the longer, curved katana, but Giles kept the quality gear in his own inventory). In a black backpack they packed more stakes, bottles of holy water, a folding crossbow, and a hand-axe, muffled with bath towels to forestall clanking, to be broken out when stealth was no longer an issue. Cordelia made a similar, smaller backpack for herself; she could carry plenty, but needed less, she just wanted to have something Xander could use for defense while she focused on the immediate business of slaughter.

Fully kitted out, Buffy flexed and twisted, assessing her balance and freedom of movement, then worked her way through a short kata before settling back, satisfied. Since returning to baseline human status, she had trained harder under Giles’ tutelage than she ever had as a Slayer, and would be roughly at a mid-brown belt level by now. Most importantly, though (Cordelia had confirmed this through her new combat-sense, and drew comfort from it) was that Buffy still knew vampires, their nature and rhythms … and knew that their strength and speed ridiculously exceeded her own, so that the aim wasn’t to defeat one — no real possibility of that — but to stay alive until she could land a killing stroke. The loss of her Slayer mojo had made her acutely conscious of how vulnerable she was now, and as a result she was just about the last person who would underestimate an opponent of the undead persuasion.

She took a moment to tighten the shoulder straps on the backpack, and told Cordelia, “Feels okay. I couldn’t hear anything shifting while I moved, so let’s hope the vamps can’t either.” She tilted her head. “Hey, how about that black leather jacket, the one hanging in the back? It’ll blend in as well as this stuff does, and give me a little extra padding if I have to take any punches —”

Cordelia cut her off. “It won’t fit you.”

“I told you, I’m not that much shorter than you …” Buffy trailed off, and her expression became wary. “Wait a minute. Is … is that the jacket he used to —?”

“It won’t fit you,” Cordelia repeated flatly.

“Oh. Right. Okay, then.” Buffy looked away. “So, are we ready to go?”

“I can’t think of anything else,” Cordelia said. “Let’s get the text messages into our phones, so we can shoot them straight over to Giles and the others just by pushing a button. When the time comes, we may not have the chance to do anything else.”

“Gotcha,” Buffy agreed. As they began to enter the messages into the phones’ memory, however, she looked to the Slayer and said, “About you going after Xander, at the mansion …”

“Look, enough,” Cordelia snapped. “He may be your snuggle-buddy, but you’re not the right person to try and rescue him! We can pull this off, but only if you do your job and let me do mine! If you can’t understand that —”

“I do,” Buffy cut in. “I do, really. You’re the Slayer, you’re our big gun, sending you is what gives him the best chance. Which completely bites, but that’s how it is. I’m just …” She hesitated.

“Yeah?” Cordelia prodded grimly.

“I’ve heard what some of the others have said, and … and I know from the expression on Willow’s face what she’s not saying. They think you’ve passed up some good shots at Angelus, because of what you used to have with Angel.”

Cordelia sniffed disdainfully, her face hard over the twisting in her gut. “I am so far past caring what anybody thinks.”

“I know how he’s tried to play you,” Buffy went on. “Using those memories to hurt you. I remember the way Xander acted, back when he was hyena-possessed … We weren’t even together then, but I saw how he was, and I can guess how I’d feel if he did to me what Angelus has been doing to you.”

Cordelia’s laugh was sharp and ugly. “You’re worried I’ll go easy on my ex just because of old smoochies in the moonlight —?”

“No,” Buffy answered. “I told you, I can imagine how I’d feel in your place. So I need you to promise me you won’t miss a chance to save Xander because you’re so determined to kill Angelus.”

Cordelia opened her mouth, then paused and thought about it. “Huh,” she said, studying Buffy, one eyebrow raised. “I guess you can take the killer out of the girl, but getting rid of that killer instinct is a whole different deal.”

“I know how I’d feel,” Buffy said yet again. “And I know how I’d react. So, do you promise?”

“Yes,” Cordelia said. “You’ve got my word on it. You’re right, I might’ve gone that way without even realizing I was letting it happen. But I’ve been warned, so yes, I promise. Xander comes first.”

“Good.” Buffy checked that the dark wig was fixed securely in place, and hefted her shoulders under the backpack one last time, then started for the door. “ ’Course, if you can do it without risking Xander, feel free to totally kick his ass.”

“Fun thought, but it lacks closure.” Cordelia fell in behind her. “Because the way to a man’s heart? definitely through his rib cage.”
 

|    Next Part     |    Previous Part    |    Chapter Index     |