Go TeamC/A
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Part 4 Angel stared at the woman in front of him the vague fleeting thought about shaking her taking on more concrete form. She was standing in front of him, her hands on her hips, an eyebrow lifted, her eyes narrowed and looking like pure royalty. Royalty that wasn't about to have her command ignored, but there was no way he was about to do what she asked. It was crazy, she was grasping at straws – wasn't she?
“Do it, Angel.”
“No, I'm not breaking into the apartment.”
“Laura knows something.”
“Cordy, damn it. She was just upset to find out a friend died, she probably doesn't know a thing.”
“Kate's files showed that all the girls killed in the last five months were connected to the agency.”
“Loosely connected. Some had stopped using it years ago, and gone onto other agencies, others had just joined. Others had been with them for years – and Wesley and I talked to the owner and he's clean.”
“Angel breakdown the door. I'm telling you Laura knows something, and I'm going to snoop and find out.”
“No.”
“Since when are you all moralistic about breaking and entering?” Cordy snapped.
Angel growled, fighting the urge to shake her and wishing they were not having this conversation. Things like this couldn't be helping him get through that tiny wall she still had between them, and her hazel eyes were getting darker and darker the more he said no. “No,” he said and winced inwardly, that hadn't been what he'd meant to say. He'd meant to be rational and talk her out of this craziness. “Cordelia, Lana…”
“Laura.”
“Whatever. She is just an actress, her friend died, she'd have called if she knew something.”
“Pfft.”
“Don't pfft.”
“Oh, I'll pfft.”
“Cordelia. If she knew something she'd have come by, or called you.”
“No. She's scared.”
“What?”
“Angel, she was more than upset at the death, she looked scared… there was fear. I know fear it was in her eyes. She was afraid. I really think she knew something and she wanted to talk, but something stopped her. For all we know she could be the next victim. We could go in there and find her dead! And no one would know – we need to go in there. Do you want another dead girl on your conscience!”
“Low blow.”
“If pushing the guilt button works,” Cordelia smiled.
“Damn it. If we get arrested, I'm telling Wesley it was all your fault.”
“And yet, he'll still blame you.”
“Favorite,” Angel said with a smirk, as he used his vampire strength to force the door open, and then rested his hand against the barrier keeping him out. “Oh, look. She's still alive. Let's just close the door and leave.”
“No. Maybe I can find something.”
“Cordelia!” But he was too late, she was inside and he couldn't get to her. The irony hit him, he felt like there was still a barrier between their friendship and now there was a very real one keeping him from her -- while she was being incredible stupid. “Get out.”
She just waved her hand at him, without turning around as she took in the apartment. “This place is…”
Angel took his eyes off of her back and looked around the small apartment. One room, bad paint job on the walls, he spotted a few roaches and frowned. It wasn't a place a young woman should live, it was like the hellhole Cordelia had been in when he'd first met up with her. He hadn't even thought to get her out of it, until she'd descended on him talking about roaches… and then he'd let Doyle handle it to get her constant yapping and snooping out of his hair. Angel let the guilt and the hindsight wash over him – now he'd do anything to be in there snooping with her and listen to her nonsensical babble. Just because, he wanted her back in his sphere fully.
“Okay, checking the fridge first.”
“The fridge?”
“Notes on it – standard place when you don't want to forget something. Always going to it.”
“Do you think she has anything in it?”
Cordelia's step faltered and she looked back at him. “Oh. I never did when I lived like this. Good point. But it can't hurt right?”
Leaning against the barrier, Angel shrugged. “Suppose not.”
“Hey, I charmed this address out of a female secretary, I can find a good clue here.”
Angel sighed. “We are going to get arrested.”
“Pfft.”
“Just hurry will you.”
“Why? Afraid Wesley will dock your pay if I get in trouble?”
He rolled his eyes but inwardly grinned, damn he had missed her.
“Who the hell are you?” Angel jumped and saw himself face to face with a young woman, too thin and with sad eyes. Laura obviously he realized. “I'm Angel. From Angel Investigations. You met my associate…”
Laura walked past him and shouted at Cordelia. “What you doing? How dare you break into my home! Who the hell do you think you are?”
“Cordelia Chase, the woman who wants to make someone pay for killing Ariel.”
Laura paled and looked back at Angel and then at Cordelia. “I, I, don't know anything…”
Angel could smell fear, and he could see it, and saw her eyes fall to the floor. Cordelia had been right, she knew something… “Laura, we can protect you. But you have to tell us what you know.”
“Please, Laura, talk to us?” Cordelia asked.
“Okay, you both can stay…”
“Does that mean Angel can come in?” Cordelia asked.
“Yes, he can come in. I can't believe you broke in here, I mean…”
“Rude I know,” Cordelia said. “But Ariel's killer needs to be stopped and I felt that you know something that can help us.”
Angel stepped around and in front of Laura. “Laura, you can tell us anything, as bizarre or surreal as it sounds and know that I will keep you safe. You don't have to fear anything.”
“I…I need to sit.”
“Do you have tea or something, I'll make you some,” Cordelia said, and Angel looked at her and saw in her eyes she was handing everything over to him now. She'd step in if he freaked out the young woman, but now it was time for him to be a Champion. She trusted him to do this right, and that was something – maybe soon she'd stop stepping backward from him and tensing up when she remembered about the months he'd been on the wrong path.***
Going through Laura's bare cupboards, Cordelia listened to the young girl babble about her life. About how she thought because she could leave her small town and come out to Los Angeles and become a star. It made Cordelia's stomach uneasy, as the memory of her naïve confidence that she could make herself rich again by becoming an actress. She'd had the same bare cupboards, the same crappy roach-filled apartment.
“Laura, if you want to go home, we can help you,” Angel said, his voice full of sincerity that Cordelia knew would be lost on Laura, but that the young girl would believe him anyway.
“You…why?”
The girls voice went from hopeful to fear-filled in seconds. She'd been lied too one to many times, but she still wanted to believe. Cordelia sighed, wondering what would have happened to her if she hadn't run into Angel? She sighed, she'd be dead, Russell Winters would have killed her because she'd been desperate enough to meet him in the middle of the night. She'd known it wasn't some innocent rendezvous, granted she hadn't expected vampire, but that was actually better than what she had expected in some weird way. She swallowed and pulled the tea out of the drawer she finally found the tea bags in.
“We would like to keep you safe. Not let anything happen to you?”
“You think someone, that guy who killed…”
Cordelia turned from where she stood filling the girl's kettle at the sink. At least her water wasn't brown, she thought vaguely as she lifted an eyebrow at Angel to tell him to push.
“You know? You know who killed her?”
Laura tensed up on her couch, growing small like she was trying to shrink. “I, I, it's just that…I'm not sure.”
“You can tell me, Laura. Whatever it is,” Angel said holding her gaze. “We'll keep you save.”
“What, what do you expect from me?”
“Nothing,” Angel said quickly.
“The truth, Laura. That's all. We want to find who killed Ariel, and we will help you go home if you want us too,” Cordelia added from the kitchen as she put the kettle onto the stove.
Laura looked over at her and Cordelia was stunned again by the sadness in the young girls eyes, and couldn't help but wonder if that would have been her in a couple of years if she hadn't turned into a secretary/seer. She barely went on auditions anymore? She suddenly realized, she hadn't wanted too? She pushed the thoughts about herself away and kept her gaze on Laura. “Just tell us what you think you know.”
Laura closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Then she looked back at Angel, “it's this guy, he's creepy – but other girls they don't think so. They let him date them, all of them, all trying to be the one who will keep him. Ariel was one of them…but then she got angry with his lies. I saw them arguing at the party – he's a chauffeur. You know, for the agency, he takes us to parties and premieres. Ariel told me she was going to give him a piece of her mind about what he does, that I'd been right to keep away from him and his lies… They were fighting and his…his face changed. Ariel didn't see it, but I did. When his face changed back, and Ariel was looking at him again, he started to apologize, he started this song and dance, and she fell for it. She just wanted someone to love her… you know? It was only a few days later you,” Laura looked at Cordelia. “You told me she was dead.”
“When his face changed, how did it change?” Angel asked, wanting to be sure.
“It deformed, I think his teeth got longer – I mean, was it even real?”
Angel nodded and glanced at Cordelia. “Why didn't you come to us?”
“I was going too, I was, but I ran into him. Or rather he picked me up for another party. I, he told me he knew I saw him, that he'd heard about people asking about Ariel. He wasn't overt, but he scared me… he tried to get me invite him inside when he drove me home. I didn't. He scared me though.”
“Angel,” Cordelia said her worry keeping her from holding her tongue. “We need to bring her to the hotel.”
Angel nodded. “Laura, what's his name?”
“Michael, I don't know his last name. He works for the agency.”
“Cordy, take her to the hotel.”
Cordelia nodded, turned off the kettle and walked over to the couch. “I'll help you pack a bag.”
“Am I really in danger.”
“Not with us watching you.”
“He did kill her didn't he?”
Cordelia nodded.
“Can he stop him?”
Cordelia smiled looking toward the door Angel had breezed out of already intent on tracking down the vampire. “He'll do more than that, he'll get Ariel justice,” and all the other girls this guy took advantage of. “It's what he does, he saves people. He'll save you like he once saved me.”
Part 5Closing the door to the room at the Hyperion she sometimes used for quick naps and showers when a case became never-ending, Cordelia let out a breath of loud air. She'd been doing the calm, stoic, 'yes it will be all right by morning' routine for Laura – when inwardly she was anything but calm and stoic.
She felt riled up and ready to go. That's how she felt, she save and sound, and more awake than she had in ages – and she was also starting to panic. It'd been hours, hours… the sun would be rising any hour now and there had been no phone call from Angel. Gunn and Wesley had long since gone home, when they'd foolishly bought her reassuring smile that she and Laura would be perfectly fine. Didn't they understand she was worried about Angel and only acting brave for the 'helpless' in their midst. Men had no clue, Cordelia reminded herself as she walked down to the lobby and started to pace the floor.
Her heels clacked, a loud racket that she pretended were calming her worried nerves. Who knew how old or good of a fighter this vampire was – or crazy. The crazier they were they harder they were to stake, she'd seen it with her own eyes more than once. And this guy was smart, using a real job to lure women into his traps, the man was probably some player before he was turned. Cordelia got a small thrill at the idea it was some vampire female who'd used his own confidence against him to kill him -- though why she'd had turn him and send him lose on poor women to not only play but kill Cordelia didn't know. Damn, she'd love to stake that vampire bitch.
Where was Angel?
Cordelia kept pacing, her worry growing with each turn she made in the lobby and her mind whirring about all the realizations she'd come too the past couple of days because of the case. Or maybe it just because she was ready? She didn't know. All she knew that it was time to…
The door opened stopping her train of thought, and she spun toward the noise pouncing on Angel. Her hands on his coat, helping him pull it off his body and noticing quickly the blood and the wince of his jaw.
“Is he dust?”
“Yes.”
“How bad is it?”
“It's deep,” Angel said, “but it's not bad, I can take care of…”
Cordelia started tugging up his shirt to find where the hole in his torso was this time and screamed when she found it, shrilly with pure terror. He covered her mouth with his hand.
“You'll wake up Laura, she is asleep right?”
Cordelia nodded and arched an eyebrow at him glaring at him.
He lowered his hand and she started hitting him in the stomach.
“hey, stabbed here!”
“Two millimeters from your heart!”
“Cordy, it's not that close.”
“Not that close my ass!” Cordelia shouted back, tugging at his shirt and using her eyes to tell him to lift his arms. He did with another wince and she pulled it off completely. “Splinter!” she shouted grabbing a big splinter out of his chest and waving it in his face. “You could have been dust. Is the asshole dust?”
“Yes.”
“Was it painful?”
“Of course.”
“Good. Go upstairs and shower. I'll be right up with blood.” Cordelia hit his arm hard one more time before he got out of her reach. “You could have died,” she yelled again.
“I didn't.”
She blew air through her nose and stalked off to the kitchen. The panic she had felt earlier becoming stronger instead of lessening as she made her way to the kitchen. He could have died, the only thought in her head as she pulled out a mug, blood and made it reflexively from years of practice. Died. Died. And he wouldn't know, or have seen… he could have died, that fucking dead bastard. Muttering, fucking dead bastard under her breath, she went to her desk with the mug, dug out the first aid kit and made her way upstairs.
“Fucking dead bastard.” She announced walking into his room.
“I heard you all the way up the stairs, Cordy. And it wasn't like I asked him to almost kill me.”
“Right, because you are mister cautious in a fight Angel. I've seen you, you get all swaggery, I can never lose. And you always end up big gapping holes. You need to me more careful,”
“Cordy,” Angel muttered taking the mug, as she grabbed the towel he had in his hands, “not dressed yet.”
“I don't care. I don't care… you need to drink and be patched up. You could be in a diaper right now or a dress and I'd make you sit and put up with it. And you like being nude. Wesley told me about finding you in bed naked one night. I think you traumatized him for life – or made him feel inadequate. Never could tell for sure,” Cordelia lectured, not listening to a word that came out of her mouth as she ranted. “Sit!”
“I'm sitting.”
“Good Dumbass.”
“Is that like good dog?”
“And people put down your intellect.”
He winced as she started to touch his chest, looking for more splinters of wood. “God, Angel you could've died.”
“I didn't.”
“Stop saying that like it wasn't a close call!”
“Why are you so panicked.”
“I am not so panicked!” Cordelia lied, then she took a deep breath and grabbed the peroxide to clean out the stake sized hole in his chest. “I was worried. Worried and then there are other issues…”
“Other issues.”
“I told Laura we'd help her get back home. She needs money. I thought maybe she could dust or something, you know help me make this place habitable again. You let it go to hell during my sabbatical.”
“Sabbatical?”
“That's what we are calling your insanity from now on. My sabbatical. You only fired Wesley and Gunn – I'll go to my grave denying that Angel.”
Angel laughed and then winced again as she pressed into his wound, applying the gauze.
“This is so nasty. I swear I still almost barf and pass out every time still.”
“I remember you saying that those first weeks working for me.”
“I remember you saving my life and I never knew if I could pay you back.”
“Cordy, you don't owe me anything.”
Cordelia captured his gaze with hers, she felt her breath catch at the look in his dark eyes and forced herself not to avert her eyes. She'd decided to give him another chance, and she was now admitting she'd been giving 100% and was going to from now on. “It's not really that…it's that Laura. I see me in her.”
“I do too,” Angel whispered.
Cordelia smiled. “I was really so lost, Angel.”
“I was too,” he admitted to her and Cordelia smiled because she heard no hesitation in his voice and it meant so much. That he could do that, but especially with her.
“You saved me, not just from a vampire, or having no money. You gave me a place I could always go too. A friend, and so much more,” she breathed in deeply and bit her tongue. She wasn't going to cry, this was a happy thing she was trying to say. If a bit mushy. “And to be a bit too much Wesley, and be a sentimental moron…I really love you know and I haven't said this yet, and well I think I should. I forgive you for your bout of insanity during my sabbatical.”
“Cordy, don't…”
She covered his mouth. “Don't you dare, dumbass. God, don't be dork. I can too forgive you. Now I'm not going to forget, so don't get your fangs in a knot. I know your vampire, and believe me I know you have mental issues. But I love you and therefore you are forgiven. And that is final, Angel.”
Cordelia finished and moved around him onto the bed, her hands running down his back, relief finally flooding her when she saw now wound there but her heart stopped for the second time that night. The stake had been so close. “God, Angel, you almost died,” she whispered again moving to sit next to him on the bed. This time he didn't say anything stupid, just slung an arm around her shoulders and pulled her into him.***
Forgiveness but no forgetting, or judging. Angel held a breath he didn't need because he wanted to remember this moment. Cordelia was against him, pliant, relaxed, relieved he wasn't dust and she'd forgiven him? The barrier was down, because of memories. The case had effected her too, he wasn't quite sure he could believe his luck, he didn't deserve it. He knew that much. Cordelia had remembered that first case too because of Laura, while it'd been a dead body and then Laura that had caused him to re-examine the beginning of their friendship. If not their whole relationship. He'd known her so long, as long as Buffy and he'd never have guessed having her saying one sentence to him would be enough to make his day. Or year.
“I'll be more careful,” he whispered.
“Better be,” she grumbled.
He smiled. She cared if she died, she still cared and she'd said so much tonight. She'd made his blood like she used too all the time, he wondered if she even knew she hadn't since he'd come back from his breakdown. He closed his eyes. “Doyle,” he said but trailed off not sure what to say next, wanting to make sure he said the right things.
“Doyle?” Cordelia repeated, sitting up and touching his face, making her look at her. “What about him?”
“Gave me you,” Angel whispered.
Cordelia rolled her eyes. “Right, he put a bow on me and everything.”
“Listen,” he said, his voice edgier than he'd meant it to be.
Her eyes widened, but she stayed quiet. A miracle, Angel realized and proof she'd forgiven him and it wasn't just words. “He came to me and told me he was a messenger for the Powers. He gave me Tina's name, but I couldn't save her. But you…you were at her party and Winters he picked you out of a million other girls at that party, Cordelia. It was you. I needed you and that vision was about you. He said after I hired you that you'd be a humanizing influence. He was always muttering about that… and you were. You are. I need you. It was always about you. Him being sent to me, the vision, Winters, it was all about you…”
He trailed off his mouth going dry as Cordelia's cheeks blushed, he wasn't sure if he'd ever seen her blush before, damn she was beautiful and he was way too naked to be thinking of her that way. “And I don't deserve you.”
Cordelia's eyes rolled. “First, I don't think I've ever heard you say that much at one time before. Congratulations. Second. Wow. I think I'm flustered and second you better finish your blood and get some rest. I need to make some phone calls, see what the cheapest airfare to Peacock, Utah is.” Cordelia smiled and then lunged forward hugging him fiercely.
And Angel gripped onto her for life, just in case she decided to put up a wall, but she didn't.
End.
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