Chapter Sixteen

Spike tried to struggle, but Wood’s arm was heavy around his throat.

“Of course you came back,” Wood hissed. “Bad penny always does, right? Always shows up, always makes trouble. It’s about time somebody—”

“Get out of my way and give it a rest,” snapped Cordelia, shoving her way between the two men and putting her hands on her hands on her hips impatiently. “It’s bad enough I had to listen to that all the way here, but someone will die a horrible death if I have to keep listening to it. And I don’t mean Spike.” She regarded the two of them crankily. Wood was tall, dark, and handsome, but had—wait for it!—a Slayer fixation. Not to mention a sense of self-importance that was kind of exaggerated for anyone who wasn’t her. Besides, one cute, brooding, Slayer-whipped guy in her life was more than enough, even if he was going in for Lassie at the moment. And three hours in a car with Skankarella and the Dark Avenger was enough to put anybody in a bad mood.

“He’s bad news,” argued Wood.

“He’s not exactly news,” Cordelia pointed out. “He was hanging around being a pain in the butt before you even knew Buffy’s name.”

A muscle tensed in Wood’s jaw, and Spike had the feeling Wood was tempted to push past Cordy and try again. “He’s trouble!”

“Well, he’s Buffy’s trouble,” said Faith from behind them. She looked at Wood and jerked her head towards the street. “Why don’t you get the bags, big guy? Princess didn’t bother to bring her wardrobe with her when she got out of the car.”

Cordy ignored Faith and stomped into the house. God, that woman was foul—the last few months, with her hanging around like a zit no amount of Proactiv could get rid of, had been enough to make the coma look good. And maybe even the last few months before the coma. Which, considering everything that happened… ewww.

Wood ground his teeth and trailed Faith back to the car. Seeing Spike, healthy and guiltless and alive, like he had any right to be there—any right to exist at all—made his bile rise. It was disgusting, against nature. “It’s him,” he spat. “He’s the one who killed Kennedy.”

Faith forced herself not to roll her eyes. He had a Spike thing—she got that. Spike killed his mother, made him an orphan. Left him alone in the world, where it was cold and horrible and nobody gave a fuck. It was still better than what she’d had, she thought with a twinge of bitterness. At least he had the memory of a mother who loved him.

Anyway, Spike wasn’t the same guy as the vampire who killed his mother, and she couldn’t judge him like that. Because if she did she’d have to start judging herself the same way, and the last time that had happened she’d gone straight to hell. Blamed herself, hated herself because of an accident, then tried to live like it didn’t matter. She couldn’t go down that road, because she knew it wouldn’t lead her anyplace good.

Faith shook her head. Okay, gotta stop thinking about it. “No way a human could get a jump on a Slayer like that,” she pointed out reasonably. He should know—they’d sparred often enough. He was big and strong—just the way she liked ‘em—but he’d never been able to get the drop on her, even when she was sleepy or hungover or sore from a hard night of slaying, or … other stuff. And Spike was a little thing next to him. Well, not that little. More … wiry.

Yeah, wiry, thought Faith, a lascivious smile crossing her face as her mind drifted. Lean and tight.

“He shouldn’t be here,” Wood insisted, as if she hadn’t even spoken. “Living with the Slayer, like he’s a damn king or something. Goes up in ash and comes back again, no, it doesn’t matter if he dusts, he’s special, he gets a second chance.”

“We all get a second chance,” she said sharply.

Pain crossed his face. “Not everyone.”

Faith bit her tongue, cursing her big mouth. “Look, I didn’t mean—”

“I know what you meant,” he returned carefully, not looking at her.

He always did. At first she’d been relieved—no one had understood her before.

But sometimes it wasn’t a relief.

Sometimes it was better not to be understood.

~*~*~*~

It was Andrew’s shrill shriek that alerted the others. It was loud enough to draw Willow from her room, Giles from his study. And none of them, in their various imaginings, expected what they found.

“Hey guys,” Cordelia said with a wry smile. “I’m back.”

~*~*~*~

Cordy was glad to be herself again. Not Coma-delia, not Glow-delia, not even the non-Cordelia who’d carried a god like a damn incubator, god, what was it with her and demonic pregnancies?

But supernatural pregnancies and all, she was especially glad to be Cordelia when she saw how everyone’s faces dropped when they saw Faith and Wood. Nothing like other people being unpopular to make you feel better, she reflected with shameless pleasure. Even if Xander had jumped halfway out of his skin when he saw her, like the big girl he was. If she was the scariest thing he’d seen lately, he was getting soft. Well, softer. And she wasn’t even going to try to figure out what he meant when he said, “She isn’t real!”

And now that the Scoobies had wrapped their minds around the fact that they were here and real and the initial excitement had died down, everything was … well, not so hot, really. They sat around the coffee table with pizza, and no one was talking much, and hey, what did she expect from a day that started with a vision of Kennedy’s dead body?

Cordy sneaked a quick glance at Willow, wondering how she was holding up. She looked composed, but … well, come on. Her girlfriend was newly among the dead. She couldn’t be doing that well, right?

Then Willow looked in her direction, and Cordelia glanced away swiftly, not wanting Willow to think she was staring. Once upon a time, back in Sunnydale, she wouldn’t have bothered, but she’d grown since then.

She stayed down after Faith and Wood went upstairs. Giles had offered them rooms, to Buffy’s obvious discomfort, and Faith pulled Wood away, something about breaking in the bed. Cordelia didn’t want to think about it, or she’d need a damn brain scrub like Gunn had gotten. Dimwit, to let Wolfram & Hart into his mind like that—what good could come of it?

“Idiot,” Cordelia muttered.

Willow leaned towards her a little. “That’s what I used to think, but she was really good when she helped us out with the Potentials last winter,” she said earnestly. “And she didn’t go all psycho killer, either. She’s different now.”

Cordy didn’t bother to correct Willow’s assumption; the idiot thing applied to Faith too, as far as she was concerned—she didn’t care what Angel said. “Everybody’s different,” said Cordy a little wistfully. “You’re a big scary witch, I’m half demon, Angel runs Evil Inc., Spike is human, you all live with the biggest geek in the world and it isn’t even Xander, there’s a whole world full of Slay—oh, and I knew you were gay!” she added suddenly.

Willow blinked, not quite following Cordy’s train of thought. “Uh … okay, that was—okay…”

“I’ve had things on my mind, that’s all—visions take up a lot of my time,” rambled Cordy, not wanting Willow to think she was so self-absorbed that she didn’t realize other people had lives. Lives which were, apparently, completely different than they were in high school, but it wasn’t like she spent her high school years giving birth to demon spawn, either, and that’s how she spent most of her time in L.A., right?

Right. “I mean, boom, I’m just sitting there and then—”

“You saw her? Today, in your vision?”

Cordy shut up abruptly. Yes, she’d seen her. It was why they’d made the trip down to Santa Rita—the vision of Kennedy’s lifeless body. She’d said that earlier, when they’d arrived, but maybe Willow had been too upset to absorb it. “I’m sorry, Willow.”

Willow’s face took on a faraway aspect. “It was awful to see her like that—all broken…” Willow whispered, barely audible.

“They made you identify her?” asked Cordy sympathetically.

Willow didn’t answer, and suddenly Xander was leaning over her protectively. “We found her. We went there to get Will’s things, and there she was.”

“You found her?” repeated Cordelia. “But in my vision, it was Giles—he was there, I saw him standing over her.”

Xander gave her a politely skeptical look. Wesley had claimed that Cordelia had visions, but Wesley had also thought he was the best Watcher in the whole history of watching. Hell, he hadn’t even been the best Watcher in Sunnydale. “Just how precise are your visions, anyway?”

Cordelia hesitated. Sometimes pretty damn, but others … “Not very,” she admitted reluctantly. “Not a photograph as much as a collage. A really … inventive collage.”

“What are they like?” he asked, nudging aside a box of congealed pizza and sitting on the coffee table. It hadn’t been that many years, but it felt strange to be around Cordelia again. Some people stayed friends with their exes, but he’d guess their breakups didn’t involve being impaled on rebar. Just a guess.

Cordelia scowled at the question. A year or two earlier she might have felt differently, but since she’d come out of the coma, the visions had seemed kind of … unnecessary. And if the visions were unnecessary, was she necessary? She’d kept them for so long despite the pain, refused to give them to Groo, gave up her dream life to become a demon to tolerate them, and what happened? The rest of them repaid her by joining Wolfram & Hart? What was up with that? She became a demon, and they just gave up and jumped on the Hell Express? “They’re … different,” she said evasively. “What about you? Still dating demons?”

Willow’s eyes were on Xander even before he blanched.

“What?” Cordelia asked blankly.

“I—I’m going to bed now,” said Xander, eyes dull. He was gone before Cordelia could speak.

When she turned back to Willow, she found the redhead studying her. Remotely, as if she were a bug. “You know about him and Anya, don’t you?”

“Hmm? Oh, they dated or something, right?” What, did Willow expect her to keep up with every little thing that happened back in Sunnydale? It wasn’t like she wasn’t busy over in L.A. Managing Angel Investigations, becoming a princess, being unconscious—her schedule’d been very full.

“They were going to get married.”

It took a moment for that one to sink in. “Married? Xander was going to marry Anya? Is that a joke?”

“Xander, uh, left her at the altar, and she died last spring when we were fighting the First. Right before Sunnydale collapsed. He didn’t get to say goodbye. He didn’t even get to see her body,” Willow finished softly. Maybe he was lucky, she thought. That way it wasn’t seared into his mind. He could remember her vital, not gray and lifeless and stiff.

Cordelia was silent for a long time. “I didn’t know,” she said finally. “No one said anything about it after I came back.”

Willow smiled weakly. She’d never liked Anya—she’d been able to hide it, finally, but her dislike had never disappeared—but she knew Anya had really cared about Xander. That was what mattered, wasn’t it? That she loved Xander, and he loved her. Not what other people thought.

Anya got what they all got. Dead. It was kind of funny, really; all these years, all these apocalypses, and the Scoobies were still alive and still together. They’d just lost their lovers, one by one.

“They all die,” she muttered to herself. “It doesn’t matter if we’re in Sunnydale or not, it just follows us.”

“Are you sure it was supernatural? Not a burglar or anything?”

“Do you really have visions about burglars?”

Cordy looked at her hands. No, she never had.

Willow could feel her temples beginning to hurt again, like they had at the police station. Talking about it wasn’t helping anything; it just made her head hurt. Maybe it would have been better, she thought, if she’d just gone upstairs to her room; the others had been sneaking glances at her all night, then looking away, as if waiting for her to burst into tears. Or maybe some of them were worried she’d become homicidal and try to end the world again. Funny how that kind of thing stuck with people.

She wasn’t going to cry, though—much—and she definitely wasn’t going to end the world. But despite the fact that her presence was obviously making people uncomfortable, she still felt she should be there—they were here because of Kennedy. And Kennedy had been there because of her.

That didn’t make it any easier, though. “Kennedy was a Slayer,” she said finally. “It had to be something big. Not a burglar.”

“She was a Slayer?” Cordy exclaimed in surprise. “I mean, I knew you’d mojo-ed the whole Slayer system, but nobody told me Kennedy was one.”

“She was amazing,” said Willow quietly. “So strong, so brave. She wasn’t afraid of anything. It had to have been a demon.

“Nothing human could defeat her.”

~*~*~*~

The art of the deal had many steps, Gunn had learned, and socializing was a surprisingly large part of it. To seal the deal it was best if the big guy himself was there, but news that some other vampire had gotten the Shanshu had sent him into the king of all funks and now he was off brooding, or sulking, or thinking, or whatever it was that Angel did when he was upset. Maybe he was locking some of Gunn’s staff in a wine cellar with a couple of vampires; Charles didn’t know. All he knew was that Angel wasn’t here.

Fortunately, their client didn’t seem to mind. “Another round, Mr. Nayer?” suggested Gunn, raising a hand to signal the waitress. Even from the other side of the nightclub he could see her shudder. He couldn’t blame her, really; Nayer had been making passes in various degrees of repulsive all night.

Damn good thing he was so well paid, Charles reflected. He never would have imagined the bastards at Wolfram & Hart worked so hard—just thought they kicked back and watched the evil money roll in. Admittedly it was easier work than patrolling the ‘hood, but the amount of schmoozing just to secure a deal with a lowlife like Nayer was ridiculous.

“Excellent suggestion,” Nayer agreed, his eyes glittering madly. “We’re becoming such good friends now, aren’t we, Mr. Gunn? I feel as if we’ve known each other for years.”

“I completely agree,” said Charles without a drop of sincerity. “And please, Mr. Nayer, call me Charles.”

“Charles,” repeated Nayer, smiling at the waitress as she made her way to the table. “I believe I shall. And there’s no need to stand on such formality, Charles.

“Call me Ethan.”