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

Part V

The problem of the locked disk still resisted any form of resolution, and Cordelia couldn’t even think of where she might begin. She didn’t know, nor could she ever learn, enough computer craft to crack the password herself. Asking Willow … the scene at the apartment, and the exchange with Oz, had made it more clear than ever that she couldn’t look to Willow on this. And, even if she could get access to the kind of funds she would need to hire expert hackership, she wasn’t willing to let the disk out of her hands, or to deal with the curiosity of whatever mercenary she might find.

It was unsettling to realize just how isolated she had become, more so to recognize that her recent quasi-ostracism, far from being a plummet from the heights, actually constituted something of a return to ‘normal’. Cordelia had already been nearing the peak of the social summit when Buffy Summers had arrived in Sunnydale … and what had that amounted to, really? Endless jockeying for position. Spending her life onstage, every moment a performance. A rotating retinue of hangers-on, but no friends, because those closest were always the most dangerous. This was a society where every step up was made on the back (or head) of someone else, so that any moment of weakness could sink you for good.

Given those circumstances, her involvement with the Slayer’s circle had been a fantastic risk, and one she had taken only because it was an unavoidable part of her growing involvement with Angel. She would never have anticipated — and for a long time hadn’t realized — just how much having actual friends, as opposed to nominal ones, would come to mean to her. In fact, she hadn’t truly understood how thoroughly her priorities had shifted, how deeply the respect and trust of her new associates mattered to her, until those things had been lost.

She had been alone her whole life, a showpiece for parents who prized her poise and achievements but showed no particular interest in the person putting on the show. She had carried the same expectations into junior high and then high school, and clawed her way to prominence without ever losing that essential solitude. The interlude with the Slay Friends had been just that, a break in the routine. Now the routine was back in full force, and she was alone again at a time when more than just status depended on her having allies.

Weekend, and nothing to do. Daytime, which (mostly) meant nothing to kill. That didn’t mean she had to sit around and brood on her helplessness. When all else failed, it was time to get back to fundamentals, to the basics that never failed.

For Cordelia, that meant the Mall.

At one time, going to the Sunnydale Mall had been more a social safari than anything else; the shopping was decent, but for really important stuff she usually mounted an L.A. expedition anyhow. Lately, though, outings to the Mall soothed her in a way that little else seemed to do. People but no crowds, music inferior but soft and muted to the background, geography familiar to the last inch but always featuring something new, some change since the last visit. Relaxation and stimulation together, along with the eternal challenge of finding (or creating) something stylish in such an unpromising hunting-ground.

Even if she no longer had any status to preserve, Cordelia still took pride in looking good.

So, makeup base to provide partial concealment for the shiners she had scorned to hide this morning, other cosmetics to alter and blur the bruises that still showed through, designer sunglasses (tinted lightly enough that she could get away with wearing them indoors) as the final level of protection, and a bright patterned scarf to draw the eye elsewhere. Thus armed and armored, she set off, grimly determined to enjoy herself … or, at the least, to break her current mood to the point where she might be able to plan her next move.

She arrived to find, as expected, that the basic layout hadn’t changed. There were a few new kiosks, one for the production of personalized temporary tattoos (tacky but likely to be popular), and one selling gaudy jewelry of the type favored by low-riders and gang-bangers (not that Sunnydale had large numbers of either, so the odds were that a new vendor would be doing business in that spot by the time of her next visit). The main stores and smaller shops she remembered were still in place, though the displays and specials on some had been altered. Cordelia sat on a bench beside the tiered indoor fountain, letting herself absorb the soothing tinkle of falling water while she considered the specific strategies of this one-girl expedition.

That was the plan, at any rate. She wasn’t sure how long she’d been sitting when a voice broke into her reverie. “Hey, Slayer, how’s it hanging? ’S’matter, no eager sailors waiting ’round the docks?”

Cordelia used the turn of her body to take her backward as she came to her feet. All her senses were screaming vampire! How had she let one get so close without noticing? Simultaneous with the movement, her laggard brain began to process its subconscious recognition of the familiar voice, so that by the time her eyes registered the newcomer, she knew who she was facing.

“Sheila.” The word was flat, revealing none of her surprise that the former grunge-girl had actually brought herself within staking distance. For all her low-class origins and scornful disdain for education, Sheila had demonstrated quite a bit more intelligence than many vampires of greater longevity: she zealously avoided the Slayer and any situations where they were likely to meet. In fact, she seemed to avoid other vampires as well, so that she had never become a target of any real priority. “Let me guess,” Cordelia went on. “This is the only place you can restock your supply of Tan-in-a-Can?”

“Har de har har.” Sheila seated herself at the next bench — another shock, putting herself in a vulnerable position in front of a roused Slayer — and Cordelia noted that the vampire girl had gone platinum blonde since the last time they had (fleetingly) crossed paths. “This isn’t about me, Queenie,” Sheila continued breezily. “Not about me and you, either. Nah, this one is all you.”

“Really?” Only her awareness of the throngs of shoppers kept Cordelia from drawing the stake discreetly sheathed at the small of her back, beneath a light jacket-top; even so, her fingers were within a quarter-inch of it. “And here I was thinking it’s about me and the big pile of dust on the bench.”

“Puh-leeze.” Sheila flicked away the thought. “I wouldn’t be here if there was any way you could touch me, so settle down and listen. Runnin’ short of daylight here.”

Somehow Cordelia was sitting again. “Like you have any use for daylight. But, hey, if you want to get in a little sun-bathing, don’t let me slow you down.”

“Okay, we’ve got the insult-a-thon out of the way,” Sheila replied, clearly unconcerned. “Now we can start working toward the Big Reveal.” She studied Cordelia, mouth set in a wide, insolent grin. “What’s that line you used to use, that you could be alone even when you were surrounded by people?”

“And also by non-people, apparently,” Cordelia shot back.

Sheila shook her head. “Fine, be that way. Point is, you are alone, and this isn’t the time for it. You’re doing a solo number when what you need is some backup singers.”

“Backup is for wimps,” Cordelia said firmly. “You know me: only room for one in the spotlight, and center-stage is my natural habitat.”

“Center-stage, five and goal, standing at the podium, none of that matters.” The other girl leaned toward her. “What counts is this: the river’s rising fast, and ‘alone by yourself’ isn’t gonna cut it.”

“Right,” Cordelia said. “Is this where we hug? Or have they switched scripts again?”

“Sorry, that’s all for now.” Sheila stood. “No rest for the wicked. Just remember, the band’s tuning up, and you don’t want your dance card to be blank when they get started.”

She strode away, and Cordelia settled back in her seat. “Sure, I’ll jump right on that.” Then she sighed, and added to herself, “Oh, yeah, back on the wheel. Always a bridesmaid …”

A sharp burst of laughter jolted her to attention, and Cordelia looked to see a group of kids, junior-high age, heading in the direction of the food court. She was hearing the sounds of the fountain again, absent during the ‘conversation’ just past, and — bingo! — she noted that a band of sun from the skylight lay across the bench where she remembered Sheila sitting.

So, another dream. It had the overall feel of a Slayer dream, rather than just random neurons firing, but didn’t actually make much more sense. What kind of warp in destiny would send her Sheila as a mystical messenger? No doubt about it, she needed to start lobbying for better representation.

At any rate, that was enough rest for awhile. Cordelia rose and resumed her retail reconnaissance. She needed to get her mind in order, recover some of the balance that the world didn’t seem to want her to have. Soft lights and new fashion and Muzak? just what the doctor ordered.

Then, as she was passing an electronics store — without a glance, what did she care about any gadgets besides cell-phones? — she heard a familiar voice and she changed directions with an instant body-pivot before she was even aware of having made a decision.

Yes, it was him, arguing with one of the clerks about bus speeds (which made no sense at all, he lived close enough to SHS that he didn’t need to take the bus, but nerds just operated in a different reality), and he trailed off as he saw Cordelia approaching. “Jonathan,” she said without preamble. “Walk with me. I need to ask you a favor.”

“Uh … sure.” He deserted the clerk without a backward glance, and followed Cordelia out into the central thoroughfare. “Wh-what do you need?”

She didn’t reply immediately, still busy sorting out her thoughts. She had acted on impulse, on instinct, and was now coming to grips with the implications. ‘Backup’, the dream-Sheila had said, which — despite her dream-denials — tied straight in with her earlier recognition that she needed help with her current situation. She had a locked disk in her possession, and background conversation in the mirror-Sunnydale had made it clear that the other-universe Jonathan had been cyber-literate and then some. “You know a lot about computers, right?”

Jonathan looked simultaneously eager and uneasy. “Well, not a lot lot. I’m no Willow Rosenberg, but I know my way around a circuit board.” His face fell. “Except, you’ve got Willow if you need to know anything about computers. Look, I’d love to help any way I can, but I’ve gotta tell you, if you have a problem that she can’t handle, I guarantee it’s beyond me.”

It was amazing. According to other-Jonathan and the witch Tara, the alternate Sunnydale she’d been yanked into had just turned over to the year 2002, and in that reality Jonathan had been a sort of hero himself … but, four years older and demon-fighting cool points notwithstanding, he had still looked and talked exactly like the Jonathan now beside her. Apparently circumstances and capabilities might change, but dweebiness was forever.

“You’re probably right,” she said. “But I haven’t asked Willow about this. I can’t, it’s supposed to be a surprise for her.” Which was true. “I have a disk, it was something Miss Calendar was doing, before … well, you know. I found it the other day, and I was hoping I could finish it as a present for Willow; you know how much she liked Miss Calendar. Only, I can’t get the file to open, it’s password-protected. I don’t know what kind of passwords Miss C used, or anything about getting past that kind of lock. You think you might be able to manage something like that?”

Jonathan considered it, biting his lip while his eyes focused somewhere in the elsewhere. “Maybe,” he said. “If Miss Calendar seriously didn’t want anybody getting in, it’ll be totally out of my league. It may have just been habit, though; in her classes, she really stressed protecting sensitive stuff, said it should be as automatic as periodic saves and backups. If it was like that, something she did without thinking about it … well, I know the basic kinds of passwords she taught us to use, plus I’ve got a few digital lockpicks that might help.” He looked to Cordelia. “Sure, I can give it a try. When do you need it?”

Day before yesterday, Cordelia thought. Aloud she said, “As soon as you can make it happen. As in, if you decided to pull an all-nighter and cracked it at three in the morning, I’d want you to call me right then.”

“All-nighter?” Jonathan blinked, then recovered. “Yeah, I could do that, it’s the weekend. I, I can get started right away if you want.”

That would have been good, but she had secreted the diskette inside one of a pair of boots in the back of her closet; too many ways something valuable could get damaged or go missing during the type of events that regularly came flying at her, even (sometimes) in the middle of the day. “Sorry, I don’t have it with me right now. It’s a good idea, though. Could you maybe meet me at the Espresso Pump in an hour? I can pass it over to you then.”

“Sure, yeah, sure thing.” Jonathan was practically hyperventilating. No surprise there, he was rightly stunned at being approached and engaged by someone at the top of the social food chain. (Which she wasn’t anymore, she’d blown off that whole scene the moment Angel had returned to the dark side, but nerds tended to be behind the curve when it came to popularity rankings.) “I’ll see you there, then. An hour. So, you’re not gonna do any more shopping here?”

“Nope.” She gave him a brilliant smile, pouring on the wattage. “I already found what I needed.”

Poor guy, she thought as she pulled out of the Mall parking lot and started back home. Wriggling with eagerness at the least show of attention from the exalted Queen C … It was a shame, really, she knew from her trip to the other universe that Jonathan could be something to reckon with in only a few years, and even now he was far from bad-looking. (In fact, if you came right down to facts, he had the most beautiful eyes she’d ever seen on a guy.) If only he were, like, two feet taller …

Never mind. She’d be nice to him, but that was a sideline to the main issue. She had a path now, an avenue of advance, and characteristicaly she was about to go at it full-throttle.

*               *               *

Retrieving the disk and carrying it to the Espresso Pump required less than the allotted hour — she had built in a cushion in case of unexpected complications — and Jonathan was likewise early at their agreed meeting spot. Cordelia passed on the disk, taking the time to stress and restress that 1) it was not to be lost or damaged under any circumstances, and 2) this project was totally private, tip-top-secret from absolutely everybody, but especially Willow. Bolstered by Jonathan’s repeated reassurances, she thanked him again and went on her way. This phase of the mission was complete, so now …

… well, what, exactly? Finding a purpose had blunted her interest in shopping and whetted her appetite for action, but it was still early afternoon and she knew of no daytime targets, not even possibilities that she might check out. No point in touching base with any of the others, they’d call her if anything came up and their company was awkward whenever things weren’t all blood and mayhem and gloomy prophecies. Nor was there anyone she could call on for companionship; her former followers — people who didn’t matter — had turned their backs on her for reasons that didn’t matter while the group of outsiders she had amazingly come to count as friends no longer trusted her fully, or in some cases at all.

She had made her own bed … but someone else was lying in it, and might continue to do so until age and death claimed the senseless body.

Cordelia shook her head and pressed her foot down on the accelerator. She wouldn’t wallow in self-recrimination, not because she didn’t deserve it but because it didn’t help accomplish anything. If she had to fill time, she’d do it with something useful.

At home, she made a quick change in her bedroom, then she went down to the workout room she had set up in the basement.

That had required some adroitness on her part. Exercise equipment wouldn’t have been remarked on, but the kind of equipment capable of building a burn in Slayer muscle wasn’t stocked by Cybex or Nautilus, and Cordelia had been afraid her parents might balk at combative arts, or at least require a harder sell than she had felt like delivering. So, she had presented it as part of her campaign to become captain of the cheer squad, which justified the tumbling mats; likewise, she had claimed that the heavy bag was for modified boxers’ routines to combine aerobics with upper body strengthening. She’d had the squad members over a few times, and the room had actually gotten their approval. Once the novelty wore off and the other cheerleaders were caught up in more interesting pursuits, however, Cordelia had begun quietly bringing in other equipment: a wing chun wooden dummy, weapons, pommel horse and balance beam and hanging rings, anything she could use to increase her flexibility, hone her reaction speed, polish her familiarity with various forms of combat. Giles had managed a decent program in the library for Buffy … but both space and (guaranteed) privacy were limited there, and if Cordelia Chase was going to do something, she meant to excel at it.

The original idea had been to set up a place where all the Slay Friends could train if they wished, though of course primarily for the benefit of the Slayer. Somehow it hadn’t happened that way. Unfavorable scheduling, the unfolding of events, the reluctance of some people (read: Marcie, Nancy, Tucker) to gather at Cordelia’s home, even for an unarguably worthwhile purpose … Different things kept the plan from being realized, and then Cordelia had been shunted to outsider status by the debacle of her and Buffy’s private plan to rescue the kidnapped Xander and Willow. End of all possibilities.

She had trained here a few times with Angel, back before her life had hung a sharp left into horror and melodrama. Now, it was for her alone, and by this time she preferred it so.

The plain fact was that no one else could challenge her. (Well, sure, Kendra, but the Caribbean Slayer was always off dealing with this or that dark evil rising somewhere in the back of beyond.) She operated in a gear that practically no one else could reach, and any sparring with others automatically meant either holding herself back or breaking her training partners. She could do more, go farther, by setting her own program and driving herself through it.

As she did now. Kicks and punches into the heavy bag, gymnastics moves to evade imaginary attacks and launch counterstrikes. Shifting, twisting, tumbling, using the handsprings and flips as a springboard to new attacks, sometimes incorporating strikes into the moves themselves. One kata after another, those she had been taught and those she had taught herself and those she had invented, chaining them together or breaking off without preparation to throw herself into something entirely dissimilar. Weapons, classical and improvised (she’d developed some routines with a claw hammer and a linoleum knife that would’ve made Steven Seagal gulp and back off quick). Attack and defense against an endless array of imaginary opponents, situations culled from memory or launched on the fly …

Kendra had once called her sloppy, unfocused. Doubtful that the girl would render any such judgment now.

Angel had given Cordelia a measure of competition, back when she had just begun to get truly serious about her self-driven training regimen. Even if he didn’t have her speed or power, he was close, and he could draw on a few centuries’ worth of accumulated sneakiness. He hadn’t quite pushed her to her full limits, but every workout with him had brought new lessons she was eager to learn. He fought the way a vampire fought, and he was one of the best, and becoming familiar with that approach, that style, that basic set of moves and attitudes, meant that she could hold her own against any heartbeat-challenged yahoo in existence …

Maybe he thought he had learned as much from her as she had from him. Maybe he had overestimated his ability to play on her feelings. Or, maybe, the pleasure of hurting her as deeply as possible had been just too tempting to resist. The night she had killed her vampiricized father, the night grief and need had driven her to make love with Angel for the first (only) time … that night had given way to a cold dawn, she waking alone in a house decorated by broken furniture and scattered piles of ashes, with no understanding of where her lover had gone or what his absence meant. She had gone seeking him, looking in all the spots where they had hunted or patrolled or even just hung out together. (There had been no way for her to check where he lived — or rested, or slept, or whatever — because she didn’t know where it was, he had always come to her.) Most of those were locales he couldn’t visit during the day, so of course most of her search had been, by necessity, postponed until dark.

She found him, at last, at the Bronze. Though the site (more or less) of their first meeting, it wasn’t one of their favorite meeting spots: too public, for a relationship that had been growing increasingly more private. He had been standing at the upper level, leaning on the railing and watching the crowd below. Even in the shadows, he stood out somehow. His eyes were hungry, speculative, and they held a dancing amusement she had never seen before. He didn’t look her way as she rushed to him, even though she knew somehow that, music and clamor notwithstanding, he was fully aware of her approach.

She halted, hand just short of touching him. Confusion fought a growing sense of something wrong: she was hesitating, and there was absolutely nothing hesitant about Cordelia Chase! “Angel,” she said at last, forcing the word out, and at last he turned his head to look at her. His smile set off fresh alarms — it wasn’t right, it didn’t go with who he was, with how they felt about one another — but she forged ahead. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you, I didn’t know where you’d gone, I thought … I thought something was wrong, I was afraid that —”

“Wrong?” he said, and his voice carried the same hint of mockery she had seen in that smile. “What could possibly be wrong?”

An ugly feeling was growing in the pit of her stomach, but she didn’t have a name for it. “You left,” she said, and even she could hear the harsh note of reproach.

“Left, yeah.” He gave her an easy shrug. “Just needed to clear my head a little. You know how it is.” He turned to look again at the throngs milling and dancing below him, but the next words were pitched to carry clearly to her. “Like I was gonna want to hang around after that.”

The shock was like a physical blow, and she seized him by the shoulder, spinning him around to face her. “What? What did you say?”

“Hey, hey.” His hands came up defensively, palms out, and his tone was placating, but the false concern he tried to put on his face was worse than a leer. “You had to be expecting something like this, right? I mean, you’ve got the look down cold, and I’ll give you style points, but let’s be serious: all those years, all that teasing with never any delivery … when would you ever learn the first thing about how to please a man?”

And she hit him. It was meant to be a slap, but arrived as a fist, with a force that blasted straight through the block he tried to throw up. He was slammed back against the railing, and for an instant his assurance seemed to waver, but he was already forming a mock-regretful response. “Whoa, temper! I know the truth hurts —” and then he threw himself off the balcony, the only move that would carry him clear of the stake she had tried to drive through his chest.

She knew. The ball of cold dread in her belly had coalesced into an awful lump of certainty, and she knew. This wasn’t Angel. This wasn’t the man she loved. She had memorized every shift of expression, every nuance of his voice, and the two of them had let one another through barriers that locked out the rest of the world. She knew Angel, and Angel was gone … and a demon wearing her lover’s face was an obscenity to be instantly expunged.

Anyone else would have smashed through one of the tables below, and perhaps triggered the kind of panic-stampede that so regularly ended evenings at the Bronze. He was cat-agile, however, twisting in the air to land in clear space, brushing a table without upsetting it, and the people around him startled but recovered when he made no aggressive move toward them. He simply stood where he was, looking up at her, and she looked back at him, and the new state of things between them was set.

He could try to play whatever games he wanted. (And he would, again and again in the weeks and months that followed.) She wouldn’t. Every time she saw him, from this moment forward, she would be doing her utmost to kill him on the spot.

The other members of the former Slay Friends had begun referring to him as Angelus, to distinguish him from the man who had been their ally. Cordelia wouldn’t do that. She called him Angel, still, wrath and pride refusing any compromise. She wouldn’t forget, wouldn’t allow herself to forget, what she had lost or who had taken it from her, stabbing herself with a fresh reminder every time she spoke his name. And, on the day she killed him, she would do it with her eyes wide open, looking straight at that face when it crumbled into ash …

She lurched forward as the heavy bag flew away from her to crash into the far wall, the unexpected lack of resistance pitching her from the steady stance that had anchored her while she unleashed a flurry of punches. She recovered her balance, and saw that the chain suspending the bag from the ceiling had broken under her ownslaught. She swore to herself. She had repeatedly reinforced the cover of the bag, had mounted it from a wide bracket secured by three-quarter-inch bolts, but she hadn’t guarded against shoddy metallurgy in the chain itself.

Unacceptable, totally unacceptable. She was in control, always in control, and now poor workmanship was making it appear that the control had faltered. That simply wouldn’t do.

A glance at the wall clock reassured her. She had met her main objective, using up the day in productive energy. It was early evening; within an hour the sun would have set far enough for Sunnydale’s creepy-crawlies to begin emerging.

At which time, maybe, she could pummel some things she wanted to break.
 

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