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(This is original creative material copyright Chris Kenworthy, based on characters that he has no right to owned by someone else blah blah biddy blah...)
How had all this happened? Just a few days ago, it seemed, she had been happy. Well yeah, she had still been marooned in a alternate dimension, and Xander had been seeming distant for a few weeks. But she had loved him, and thought he liked her, and that had been filling the void left by the loss of her old friends and her normal life. More than filling it; he had given her a kind of satisfaction she'd hadn't known in years. Not since Rachel had been alive, in fact, though she hadn't thought of it that way at the time.
And now, all of a sudden, all of that had vanished like a mirage. Neither of them had been what she thought they had, for months. Cordelia had led a secret life, (well, kind of - a secret from no one but herself it seemed,) terrorizing Xander and all his friends as a psycho-witch. And Xander had fallen in love with Buffy, and she him.
And how much had happened over the past day or two? Not only had she tried to kill both Xander and Buffy, she had been the Vampire Slayer! Only for a few hours, admittedly. But it had been the most incredible time of her life; the rush of courage, the feeling of strength. Yet, at the same time, she realized how serious it was, and how little of a choice Buffy had had in it. Cordy wasn't quite sure how that made her feel about the real Slayer.
And she remembered about Rachel, and the vampire Damian. How much of her snarkiness, of her fancy airs and snobbishness, had been an attempt to cover up the pain of that forgotten memory? Yeah, given, she had always been proud of her background and felt it was important to look good... but how much happier had she been when she hadn't been going postal about it?
She still loved Xander... she was certain about that. But she wasn't going to try to take him away from Buffy. That would be nasty, cruel, manipulative - all the things she had just realized she didn't like about herself. But could she really take the pain of being without him?
Cordelia groaned and rolled over, burying her face in the cushions.
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