Cordelia snarled at Smarna. The tall demon snarled back, though not as convincingly as before. Progress – finally! 

It’d been a while since her arrival here, as Prince Bret’lc’s lover. And while the Prince was good in bed – great in bed, phenomenal in bed – his wife wasn’t so accommodating. Probably to be expected, but Cordelia was used to being accommodated in all things, and her affair with the Prince should’ve been no exception.  

She was learning to accept these ever-increasing exceptions, but she didn’t like them. 

Smarna no longer made her clean the floors – naked and with no gloves – but that didn’t really count as progress from Cordelia’s view. Especially when the tall gray-blue skinned demoness eyed her with such an unfathomable look as to make her skin crawl. Considering all she’d seen the past years since Buffy came to town, and however hell long it’d been since Angelus blew up the world, that was saying quite a bit. 

She had a feeling Smarna was either eyeing her for a tasty meal, or for a sexual conquest. Neither of which Cordelia liked. 

“You may be his favorite now,” Smarna sneered, “but his tastes change with the winds.” 

“If you haven’t noticed,” she snapped back, at a small loss on how to insult someone who didn’t understand your best derogatory remarks, “there’s no wind here. Angelus saw to that when he took over this place.”

“Never speak of him in such an offensive manner!” she shrieked. “He is your god, you pathetic lowlife human!” 

Cordelia allowed a hint of a smirk to cross her features. “My dear Smarna,” she said coldly, “I am a personal friend of our goddess, Buffy, and I have known Angelus since before his ascension to his current position.” 

He’d been trying to kill her but that wasn’t the point. 

It hadn’t taken her long outside of the cages to learn that the so-called Scooby Gang was as clueless as always. Then again, they were trapped below, isolated from the real world, cocooned in their own fantasy place. Xander, wherever he was now, always had been and always would be, though what surprised her was everyone else’s insistence on clinging to the past. 

It was gone. Buried, dead, beaten until nothing existed of it. 

The people – humans, demons, vampires, and other creatures of the night – worshipped Angelus and Buffy. Down on bended knee, they are my god and goddess, please bless me, worshipped. It was creepy. It was weird. But it was there. 

“And yet,” the demoness said, “I’ve yet to see our goddess visit you.”
 

Cordelia scoffed, unwilling to let her position falter no matter the truth in the other woman’s words. “You think our beautiful, wise, and kind goddess has time to visit? Please. It’s up to us to request an audience with her, you should know that, Smarna.” Smarna scowled, and she couldn’t help the satisfied smile at that look. 

“Yet you have not requested such,” she pointed out. “Is it because you fear rejection, or because you are not as close as you claim?” 

Without waiting for a response, Smarna whirled and stalked out of the room. Cordelia waited until the echo of her heels died before letting out a sigh. Another confrontation survived. Each one was harder and harder, and Cordelia truly feared for her life. One of these days the demoness was going to forget both their places and rip her throat out. 

“You should not provoke her like that,” Chauque said. “She wields great power in court and with the Prince. Should she be displeased enough with you, not even our goddess can save you from her retribution.” 

Cordelia nodded, but only said, “It’ll be fine.” 

She didn’t trust the maid, whether she professed her undying loyalty to her or not. Words meant nothing to her, not any more, and a servant’s vow taken to the new girl meant even less. Smarna was the feminine power in this household, and the maid would be stupid to cross her. Cordelia was not a stupid woman, and had no intention of playing her hand until the time was right. 

Not that she had much of a hand. 

Not that she knew when the time would be right. 

But she wasn’t going to reveal anything to the maid. If it was one thing her mother had instilled in her over the years, it was that the help was just that. Nothing more. 

A sudden wave of grief washed over her. She had no idea what happened to her parents. Though far from a close familial relationship, she did miss them. They couldn’t possibly be alive, not if they were in Sunnydale when the Acathlan Wave hit. And if they were alive, Cordelia wasn’t sure she wanted to see what happened to them. 

Every horror movie she’d ever seen (not that she really liked horror movies, and they never came to the movie theater, not in Sunnydale where every night was a horror) paled in comparison when she recalled what was really out there. 

“Thank you, Chauque,” she said with a smile. Trust or not, she didn’t want to alienate the girl. “And thank you for your warnings. If you’ve nothing else to do, please take the afternoon off.” 

Chauque bowed lowly, head nearly touching her knees in her show of respect, and quietly left. 

As alone as she’d ever be, for Cordelia was certain Smarna had a spy or two watching through some peephole or other, she laid on the bed. Relaxation was hard to come by these days, and she found she was always tense when not fucking the handsome Prince until neither could move. 

What she needed was information. It was impossible to depose Smarna, she was the rightful wife and Princess of Bret’lc. She’d bore him several children already, and would be the one to be buried next to him after their long lives finally ended. She was the one who’d be remembered next to his name, hers inscribed on their joint stones. 

That wasn’t what Cordelia wanted. She wanted power, a secure place for herself and the child she was going to have. Not yet, she wasn’t stupid enough to get pregnant before obtaining that position. But she was going to have a child, several if she could manage. 

In all her reading, before coming to the Prince’s wing as his newest concubine, that little tidbit stood out. It had planted itself in her mind, took root and grew. Its germination was now forcing her to take charge of her life, for once, and make something of it. 

The mother of any children, halfbreed or not, was revered for her entire life, whether or not her lover grew tired of her. And, unless there was a coup, those children had a place of power in the convoluted and nausea-inducing society that was Bret’lc’s world. 

“Mistress,” Chauque said, the door half opened. 

“Yes?” Cordelia sat up, smoothing hair and dress and hoped she didn’t look as tired as she felt. “Chauque, I thought I told you to take the day off?” 

“Yes, Mistress,” Chauque nodded, wide eyes wider than she’d have thought possible. Not fearful, Cordelia noted, but surprised. In awe, actually.  

“You’ve visitors.” 

Visitors? Since when did she receive visitors? More to the point, since when did anyone save Bret’lc, Smarna, and Chauque visit her? Rising, Cordelia nodded to her maid and prayed it was merely Buffy. She wasn’t up to anyone else today. 

Buffy walked in. Relaxing slightly, Cordelia felt some of the tension leave her. In that instant, with the stress of the past weeks melting away, with Chauque’s wide-eyed awe, with the certain knowledge that Smarna would hear of this visit, (and the smug feel of pride at that) Cordelia realized how much she’d missed the blonde. 

Truly missed, not just in the way this visit could help her. But honestly missed her. 

“Buffy!” She said and surprised them both by crossing the room to hug her. 

Buffy surprised them both by hugging her back, and Spike merely shook his head and closed the door behind him.

“He’s standing guard,” Buffy said at her questioning look. “I-” 

Cordelia cut her off with a quick gesture. How to explain that it probably wasn’t safe to talk without outright saying it wasn’t safe to talk? Never one for subtly, she shook her head, glanced around the room like an imbecile, and mouthed, We’re being watched. 

Buffy merely raised an eyebrow. With a swift flick of her fingers, she sent a ripple through the room that was as clear as it was obvious. Then, making herself comfortable on the chaise lounge, all regal and queenly, she waited for Cordelia to join her. 

“Well, I see you’ve changed,” she began. “Nifty powers you’ve got there.” 

“Yes,” Buffy nodded. “It comes with the new land.” 

“New land? You mean Acathla?” Stunned, she asked, “You’ve got Acathalan powers?” Buffy nodded again. “Wow. Neat.” 

“Not really.” 

“You can make the room spy-proof, Buffy. That’s neat.” 

Later, Cordelia would think that Buffy’s laugh surprised only Buffy, herself, and wasn’t that odd. Didn’t she laugh anymore? Sure, she had that goddess gig going, but she was with the man (demon, whatever) she loved. Surely that was worth a giggle or two.

“I suppose you’re right.” She laughed again, and with that, relaxed. Cordelia could actually see the tension leave her body as if it was a mist evaporating through her pores. “I actually came to see how you were doing. But I see you’ve maintained your position here.” 

“Maintained, yes, barely. But I want more.” 

“Be careful,” she waned, “more isn’t always good. Are you sure it’s what you want?” 

“I want stability, Buffy. I want to know that Bret’lc’s bitch of a wife won’t have me killed – she’s far too much the coward to do it herself – or that I’ll suddenly find myself tripping down a flight of stairs like some gothic heroine.” 

“But without the handsome hero to save you?” 

“Bret’lc would save me,” Cordelia said slowly, truly thinking on it for the first time. On his part, not just her own role in this melodrama. 

“He’d save me – if he was there – and he’d make sure I was well again, but he’d never go after Smarna. And she’s the power in his household.” 

“You want her power?” 

“No. God, no!” Cordelia laughed, suddenly remembered her manners, and yanked on the bell pull by the windows. “Tea?” she asked. 

“Since when do you like a spot of tea?” Buffy mocked in her best Giles voice. 

“Since getting out of that damned dungeon,” Cordelia admitted, and realized all over again how much she missed her former life. Not her stuff, but the stability of it, the everyday-ness of it. “Giles rubbed off on me more than I’d ever admit. And don’t go telling him that!” 

“We’re hardly on speaking terms.”

“Well just in case you are again, he’s never to know that I enjoy tea and scones.” 

“Blueberry.” 

“Yum, or the plain ones with raspberry jam.” 

“Ooh, yes, those are good, too.” Buffy glanced at the door seconds before Spike yanked it open. The premonition thing freaked Cordelia out, but only for a second. It was hardly the strangest thing she’d seen. 

After all, she was fucking a demon prince and thinking of having his baby. 

Chauque, now awed and terrified, carried a large tray piled high with their afternoon tea. She stared at Buffy, never blinking, and set the tray on the table before them. Instead of bowing, as she’d done with Cordelia, the maid prostrated herself on the floor. 

“My beautiful goddess,” she said, “I am at your service. Anything you wish, you have simply to ask, and it shall be done.” 

The disconcerted look she’d expected to see on Buffy’s face was nowhere to be found. All grace and poise that one, smiling gently down at the woman, voice soft and kind. Amazing what living in a hell world did to people. 

“Please rise. I thank you,” she said once Chauque had done so, “for your kind words. My one request of you,” Cordelia gave her points for the use of request, “is for you to see to my dear friend’s health and well being. I fear I cannot visit as often as I’d like, and wish to know that she’s taken care of properly.” 

“Yes, my Goddess,” she said, and repeated it dozens of times as she crawled, backwards, out of the room. Before Spike closed the door, Cordelia heard his snort of aborted laughter.

“Since when do you care about my health and well-being?” 

“Since we all got trapped in this place.” Cordelia raised an eyebrow, and Buffy amended, “Really. I admit to not caring, personally, about you before, but that was then.” 

“Personally? You always cared,” she said and took a blueberry scone. Pouring them both hot tea, she offered her not-really-friend the sugar bowl. Two lump apiece. 

“You cared,” she added, “because you cared about everyone. In that non-personal way.” 

“I hated losing. Saving people was a way to not count the ones I couldn’t.” 

“Saving me from the dungeons?” 

“It was a way to make amends for not being able to stop-” 

“Buffy,” she sighed, and sipped her hot, sweet tea. She relaxed a notch more and couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt this relaxed. “Maybe it was supposed to be this way. Bret’lc and his people – however the hell you pronounce their names – believe in that whole predestination thing.” 

“Do you believe that?” 

“Do you?” 

“I don’t know,” Buffy sighed, and leaned against the backrest of the chaise lounge. She looked completely defeated, limp as a rag doll. “I don’t know what I believe any more. I know what happened. I know what was and is, and I know that I’m to blame.” 

Cordelia snorted. “Please, Buffy. Get over it. Get over yourself. This wasn’t your fault nor your doing. It happened. Who the hell knows, maybe it was supposed to happen. Maybe it was what this world was heading towards – look at what we were before this. Certainly not much better.”

Buffy stared at her but she shrugged. “Okay, maybe not end of the world stuff, but that’s not the point I’m trying to make.”

“And what is that point?” 

“That it’s done. It happened. What are you going to do to change it?” 

That got her attention. And about time, too. Cordelia was tired of this woe is Buffy bullshit. “Change it?” she demanded. “I thought you of all people understood that there’s nothing I can do to change anything here.”

”Then quit moaning and bitching, and get on with your life.” 

Her eyes narrowed and Cordelia felt a wave of magick spin about the room. That was pretty cool. What other neat tricks did she have? 

“Sneaky bitch.” 

“I’m so glad you remembered, darling.” She threw her hair over one shoulder, a move she hadn’t had much chance to perform recently. Not for the knowing audience at least. 

“Now, on to more important matters.” But Cordelia shot her a grin that took the sting out of her words. Buffy nodded, and relaxed again. It was amazing to watch such a transformation, when Cordelia hadn’t really noticed an excess of stress before this brave new world. She refilled her teacup, and nodded for her to continue. 

“Your position here,” Buffy began. “What more do you want?” 

“Stability, I already told you that.” Buffy waved that away with a flick of her wrist. “Having a child provides me that, assuming both mother and child survive the pregnancy and birth. Or that the child, sensing weakness in its mother, doesn’t try to kill the mother in the first moments after its birth.” 

“I can’t get you pregnant, Cordelia.” 

Snorting in laughter, she shook her head. “No, but if I thought having sex with you could somehow increase my standing, don’t think I wouldn’t rule it out.” 

Buffy laughed, and Cordelia wondered, in that tangential thought process way, if Buffy’d consent to having sex to maintain her position here. Would she? Would she have sex with a woman if it meant power and that coveted stability? 

Yes. 

And that was all there was to it. 

“I need to learn their language.” 

Buffy, still grinning, snorted in laughter again. Cordelia chose to ignore it. 

“And I need to survive the birth.” 

“How would one manage to cross-breed? I mean are humans and they compatible for a child?” 

“I don’t know. I know there are half-breeds, and I know it’s been done before, but I’m not sure if it’s ever been done with a human.” 

Buffy raised her hand, then paused. “Spike knows more about them than I do and might be able to answer your questions now. If you don’t want to trust him, I understand, but it might take me a while to look it up on my own.

For long minutes she was silent, staring behind her through her window at the emptiness of the landscape. Finally, she nodded. “Ask him.” 

With a flick of her wrist, the magick collapsed from the room and Spike opened the door. “Ready then?” 

“Spike, I have some questions for you. Please join us.” 

“If this is about your back,” he began. 

No doubt it was the shaking of the room that stopped him. 

With another signal from her fingertips, that invisible wave of silence once more engulfed them. Jealous, Cordelia wondered if it was a gift Buffy would bestow on a friend. It’d be wonderful to have in this political asylum. 

“Bret’lc’s people,” she began. “Can they breed with humans?” 

Spike didn’t look at Buffy, though she’d asked the question. Instead he assessed Cordelia in slow, leisured blinks of his eyes. She wanted to ask him if vampires needed to blink or if it was just a remembered automatic function of the now-dead human body. Like breathing when they didn’t have to. 

“Think long and hard on it, pet,” he said. “Having his kid isn’t for the faint of heart. Or constitution. It’ll be a long pregnancy, like a year or something.”

She swallowed a shout of dismay. A year?! Nine months was bad enough. A year? 

“If you survive that, if you survive the political machinations that’re sure to center on you once it’s discovered you’re with child, and if your kid doesn’t kill you first, then you’re in. Untouchable at that.” 

“Can I get pregnant with his child?” 

Spike shrugged. “Don’t see why not. There are plenty of half-breeds roaming around. I think Bret’lc’s great-great-grandmother was one. But I could be wrong. Their family tree is as convoluted as the world is red.” 

“And the odds of me surviving this?” 

“About the same as you surviving as a Spinal Tap drummer.” 

Cordelia snorted. “Wonderful. I don’t know which is worse – my chances, or me knowing your reference.” 

“I’d say the reference, pet.” Spike smiled and snatched the last blueberry scone. Buffy scowled at him, but he scoffed it up before smiling benignly at her. 

“Clues, hints, advice, cheats?” 

She so didn’t need a fight over scones between Buffy and Spike. Despite the fact that he had eaten the last blueberry one. Bastard. 

“Learn the language – you’ll be able to understand their plotting that much better if you do.” Cordelia nodded and looked to Buffy who also nodded – she’d get the necessary information. 

“Let your friendship with the Slayer here be known. That’ll increase your political alliances, but I assume you know enough not to trust too heavily in them.” Cordelia dismissed that. Of course she did. Wasn’t she Queen C? “And tell Bret’lc.” 

“That I want his kid so I don’t have to worry about my life?” Cordelia shook her head. “No. I’m his mistress, his concubine.” 

“Ah, but he waited for you,” Spike pointed out. “He went through Angelus for you and has taken no other woman since your arrival.” 

“How,” Cordelia asked, eyes narrowed at the blonde vampire, “do you know that?” 

“I’d like to know as well,” Buffy said, tapping her fingers against the table. The cadence was distracting, angry. But nothing moved with her anger, so that was a plus. 

“Dru,” Spike scowled. “She and Bret’lc…he told her.” 

Cordelia watched him glare into his tea. She hated that she emphasized with him. Hated that she knew what he felt, staring, unseeing, into the dark brew, with all the jealously and hatred that went with it. She knew…not for Bret’lc, though she strongly suspected that she could develop feelings for him. In general, in life. 

He looked up then, a sharp jerk of his head and stared at her. She could see the understanding in his eyes, feel his own camaraderie in the slow nod of his head. Reluctantly tearing her gaze from his, she looked to Buffy. Her expression was unreadable, sad yet distant. 

They talked for a little while longer, Spike enlightening them with tidbits on Bret’lc’s life and family. When Buffy left, Cordelia realized the depth of her feelings, of both their feelings. 

“Stay safe,” she whispered, hugging her tightly. “Be well. If you need anything, even if it’s just to get out for a walk, send your maid with the message.” 

Returning her hug, Cordelia nodded. She didn’t say anything, she couldn’t. Just nodded, then murmured, “Thank you.” 

She watched her…still not friend leave the room. Frowning, she called out, “Buffy, what the fuck is on your back?” 

The former slayer didn't answer, but sent her a scowl that contorted her whole face. The answering wall-shaking was enough for her. 

Spike, however, snickered. Once Buffy was over the threshold, he said, “Angelus’ work.” 

“He’s so dead,” Cordelia told him. 

She swore the laugh echoed through the closed door.

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