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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...) |
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"So," Damien started arrogantly, "it seems the time has come for my great dramatic monolog, in which I cast aside the mas and show my true face. For of course, I am not the King of France, here to take the Princess Cordelia away from her troubled family life and make her a queen in my own country." He laughed mirthlessly at her. "I am Edmund, Cordelia's nemesis, destined to destroy her." He smirked. "Edmund's name even has most of its letters in common with mine!"
He turned, walked a few paces, and turned back to her. "But destroy Cordelia how? When I first decided to come here, to torture and destroy the Slayer's daughter, I took it for granted that the piece de resistance of my plan would be to kill you, or to change you and make you like me." Damien smiled as Cordy yelped right on cue. "After I had made you fall in love with me, of course. But the more I got to know you, the more I realized just how dramatically unsatisfying that would be." He stared down at her contemptuously. "So pitiful. Such a mewling, helpless, infant of a child you are, Cordelia dear." He laughed hollowly. "So clueless, to borrow from your own vernacular."
He took a dramatically deep breath, and continued. "So, shall I then kill you, and put you once and for all out of your misery? Because it shall be misery, my dear, make no mistake. Real life is going to eat you alive, honey. It's gonna be painful, and you are so not ready for it." He looked down again at Cordy, who was starting to shiver and tremble uncontrollably. "Or should I give your body over to the brethren, giving into your hands the one gift a wretch like you least deserves, the clarity of hatred?" He scoffed loudly.
"So, it seems I am left with only one choice to complete my mission." Damien reached out to the side and grabbed what looked like a long steel rod, perhaps four feet long, an inch or so thick, and wickedly pointed at the end. "Get up!"
Cordelia tried, but her legs wouldn't seem to work. "Did you hear me, bitch?" Damien called out, slapping her on the cheek with his left hand, his long fingernails drawing blood. "Stand up!"
With a huge effort of will, Cordy got her legs under her and stood precariously up. She wondered what he was going to do to her, and thought of screaming, but doubted that it would be any use.
"Stand up against that wall," Damien ordered, indicating one of the side walls of the room. "Facing away from it, towards me." Cordy did so, terrified.
Damien weighed the metal rod in his hand. "Look at me, lover," he whispered, and stabbed forward with the makeshift weapon. It poked through, into the left side of her abdomen, an inch or two above her waist, and continued on through. Damien chuckled when he heard it bite into the material of the wall, and twisted the rod just a little. Then he let go of it, making sure that it still poked out on the same angle, impaling Cordelia's body.
Damien swung the door open again, turning just enough to look at Cordelia, framed as she was in the moonlight. "Good bye for ever, my dearest love," he drawled, and shut the door.
Cordelia felt the world slipping away from her as a trickle of blood ran over her stomach and down her leg...
* * * *
Cordy woke. She hadn't expected to. "Where the hell am I?" she muttered out loud in that first moment of confusion.
"Sunnydale General Hospital, dearie," a voice rang out cheerfully from the far corner of the room.
"Huh? But I... I..." her fingers ran down of their own accord to check where the wound had been. There were bedsheets in the way, but under them she could tell that her stomach was well bandaged, and had perhaps been stiched.
"There's a lotta people who'd like to know how ye got in those poor straits, luv, and what happened to the other one." the nurse chatted on. "Me not the least." Perhaps she saw the torrent of confused emotion that filled Cordelia's face, because she added, "Of course, you don't have to talk about it until you're ready."
"How did I... get here?" Cordelia blurted out lamely. "How am I doing?"
"Ambulance brought you in... there was a 911 call, ducky. Said the name was Damien Gloucester... does that mean anything to you?
"No," Cordy assured her firmly. Gloucester... Edmund's father in King Lear.
"As for the other, you'll be in here for a few weeks, but you'll live. Your father and mother have been here a lot..."
"My mother's dead," Cordelia told her bluntly.
"Oh. It was your stepmother, then, I imagine, if you've got one," the nurse continued imperturbibly. "I'm sure they'll be back right quick when we call to tell them you're awake. And there's a young man waiting for you out in the hall." She dropped her voice conspiratorially. "I think he's a bit stuck on you, dear."
Cordy couldn't think for the life of her at that moment who it could be, but she mentally kicked her when a figure entered the room. Jesse, with a huge display of balloons on sticks and flowers.
"Cordy, I..."
"Save it!" she snapped. "I do not want to hear another word from you as long as you live! In other words, DROP DEAD LOSER!!"
Jesse's face fell, but he put the display on a nearby table before solemnly walking out of the room. Cordy reached painfully over and tore off of it the card saying in large print Get well soon, Jesse.' Angrily, Cordelia scrunched it up into a ball and tossed it across the hospital room.
A few minutes later, Cordy picked up the telephone and dialed Harmony. She picked up on the second ring. "Hey, Harm? Yeah, I'm okay... Oh, girl, you wouldn't believe me if I told you. Anyways, the nurse said I'm gonna be in here for weeks, but we've still got to be working on our plans... Yeah, you heard me. We're going to be the most popular girls in the sophomore class this year, no matter who we've gotta destroy to make it happen. After all, popularity is just power... it goes to the people who take it..."
* * * *
She woke up, (again?) She was lying on her living room couch this time, and...
"Oh, man that was weird," Xander Harris muttered.
Xander? It took Cordelia a few seconds to reorient... She wasn't in the hospital, recovering from Damien's attack the summer before Sophomore year, she was... "Oh, no." Cordy looked around, seing Xander, Willow, and Buffy Summers all waking up around her. She remembered the ritual to transpossess the Slayer spirit back from herself to Buffy... "Did you all just..."
"See what seemed like an hour-long montage of hideously personal and revealing memories from your sophomore summer, Cordy?" Xander asked. Buffy and Willow shot him angry glances. "No, of course not."
"Oh, great," Giles said, walking ethereally into the room. "You're awake again. How was it?"
"Intense, but no more than intense," Buffy reported. "Cordy, I..."
"No, don't..." Cordy's defensive reaction trailed off. "What?"
"I wanted to apologize, Cordelia," Buffy said. "I've given you a lot of grief since I came to Sunnydale, and I never even stopped to think of your side of things, that there are reasons you act the way that you do, or that getting mixed up with the supernatural nasties might be much more traumatic for you than they are for me. So, I'm sorry, Cordy."
"Me too," Willow said. "I've been every bit as much of a bitch to you as you've been to me, and with a lot less of an excuse. I never dreamed... but of course, there's no reason you should have told me about something like that..."
"Actually, I don't think I really remembered it," Cordelia said. "I mean, I still felt the pain of that thing, but I put the actual memories out of my mind. That's why I never really made the connection when I ran into vampires again on prom night."
Cordelia took a deep breath. "And I'm the one who should be apologizing. I've made all of your lives as hellish as I could, in a pointless attempt to get back at a demon who doesn't even care that I'm still alive and who left town years ago. I've got..." she broke off, thinking of something. "Where did that vision come from, though?"
"Um," Willow stalled, but Cordelia wasn't waiting for an answer.
"Giles, this 'Slayer spirit...' how with it is it?"
"With it?"
"How aware is it of what's going on? Does it change things, besides giving the Slayer super strength?"
"Um, accounts are sketchy, but it is believed that the Spirit is aware of its surroundings and the memories of the Slayer, and though it can't act overtly, it does work to change the Slayer into a model champion of humanity."
"But, this was a weird situation, right?" Cordelia asked. Giles nodded. "So, the Slayer spirit's in my mind, it knows it has to leave, and that it won't have a chance to make me a better person the tortoise way. Could it have brought out that memory? Trying to show me where I went wrong?"
Giles nodded, taken by surprise by the maturity and responsibility behind Cordelia's words. "Yes, I suppose so, given the energy of the transpossession."
Buffy broke in with another thought. "That vamp, Damien - he called you the Slayer's daughter, didn't he?"
Cordelia jumped in surprise. "Yeah, he did. I never clued in to that one either. Could he have been right?"
"I doubt it," Willow offered. "If she was, I think Giles and Tojo would have figured it out from the Watcher diaries..."
"Except I haven't had time to peruse the watcher diaries satisfactorally, Willow," Giles broke in quickly. "Where would it have been? Western States, late seventies or early eighties..."
"We'll check," Buffy summed up. "One more thing, Cordy?"
Cordelia turned to look at the other girl. "Yeah?"
"In... well, in view of things... I was thinking maybe it would be a good idea if Xander and I back off and we give the whole situation a little time. Let the poor boy figure out who he wants," she added, smiling.
"Hey!" Xander protested.
"No," Cordelia said. "The two of you are together now, and have been for a while, haven't you? I'm not going to get in the middle of that."
"You sure that's what you want?" Buffy pressed. Cordelia nodded.
"Let's go check on those diaries," Giles interposed, and he Buffy Xander and Willow headed off to the room that had been Mister Tojo's, where he would have kept his copies of the diaries.
"No, it's not what I want," Cordelia whispered, alone in the room. "But it's what I've got to do."
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