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samsomTitle: An Unclaimed Bear
Author: Samsom
Rating: PG
Summary: She needs to make a choice before she goes into his room.
Disclaimer: Not mine. ME and Whedon own all.
Notes: There’s been some talk in the last few months (always a good thing), mourning the lack of closure or a confrontation between Wes and Cordy after Sleep Tight, and two very excellent fics giving them that scene. I never had a problem with Cordelia dropping Wesley so completely, and, as usual, the fic ‘voice’ began to talk while I was doing the dishes. Here’s my version of why she didn’t. Set during Double or Nothing, in the few minutes between Cordelia being told of Connor’s abduction and going into Angel’s room.
~~
She needs a few minutes.
She lets go of the doorknob of Angel’s door, and she goes further down the hallway and turns the corner.
Stopping, she leans against the wall and slides down the old wallpaper, her back pressing as she sits on her heels.
Connor.
Little baby.
She doesn’t know if she wishes he were dead or not. Those last few moments in Holtz’s clutch, crying for familiar arms, terrified at the bright lights and what must have been overwhelming sounds…
While she was off getting a bad haircut and a God-awful tan, having fun in the sun with Groo while Connor…
Did he last long? In that hell dimension? Did Holtz kill him or throw him to whatever animal might have been sliding by. Slow starvation? Torture?
Holtz was a broken and twisted soul. God knows what kind of ‘justice’ he felt Connor must have deserved, being Angel’s son.
But he wasn’t just Angel’s son.
Cordelia would never change the events of Connor’s birth, his conception, because both of those things, and everything in between, resulted in the most beautiful baby she’d ever held, ever seen.
She wouldn’t change a thing, but….she had a stake in that baby. He was hers, too. Maybe not of her body. She wouldn’t ever compare her loss to Angel’s.
But it is a loss to her.
She lost that warm, strong body in her arms, those smiles and that smell…
She catches a sob in the bottom of her throat as her eyes blur.
-that smell at the top of his head.
She lost that.
She never thought in terms of being a mother. She wasn’t.
But he was still hers.
And now he’s not.
Because of Wesley.
She immediately shies from the thought of him.
It hurts.
His doofus smile and his glasses that swallowed half his face and his not quite-innocent looks at Fred.
He did this. He put these events in motion.
She still can’t –
How?
Why?
WHY?
She bangs her head against the wall and thinks of Angel in the room behind her back.
There’s a black hole in the space between them.
She’s in the Before - before Connor was taken, before Angel tried to kill the man they both trusted with their lives, before Wesley did the worst thing one human being can do to another.
Angel is now in the After.
After Connor.
She doesn’t know how to bridge that space.
She does know that a choice is in front of her. To push down her own profound loss and get swallowed up by Angel’s. To be what he needs her to be, where he needs her.
When he needs her.
Whatever he needs.
Because she knows that if there was ever a time they could lose him, it would be now. The chasm she feels looming will swallow him whole
She needs to hang on to him, with both hands, as tight as she can, anyway she can.
And to do that, she needs to let go of Wesley.
So she does.
And, because of her own empty arms, and the teddy bear she brought back that will never be placed next to a slumbering, sweetly gurgling baby, it’s easier than she thought.
Like falling.
She takes a deep, cleansing breath and pushes up on the balls of her feet, straightening away from the wall.
Turning, she walks the short distance back to Angel’s door and turns the doorknob, entering.
~end~
Author: Samsom
Rating: PG
Summary: She needs to make a choice before she goes into his room.
Disclaimer: Not mine. ME and Whedon own all.
Notes: There’s been some talk in the last few months (always a good thing), mourning the lack of closure or a confrontation between Wes and Cordy after Sleep Tight, and two very excellent fics giving them that scene. I never had a problem with Cordelia dropping Wesley so completely, and, as usual, the fic ‘voice’ began to talk while I was doing the dishes. Here’s my version of why she didn’t. Set during Double or Nothing, in the few minutes between Cordelia being told of Connor’s abduction and going into Angel’s room.
~~
She needs a few minutes.
She lets go of the doorknob of Angel’s door, and she goes further down the hallway and turns the corner.
Stopping, she leans against the wall and slides down the old wallpaper, her back pressing as she sits on her heels.
Connor.
Little baby.
She doesn’t know if she wishes he were dead or not. Those last few moments in Holtz’s clutch, crying for familiar arms, terrified at the bright lights and what must have been overwhelming sounds…
While she was off getting a bad haircut and a God-awful tan, having fun in the sun with Groo while Connor…
Did he last long? In that hell dimension? Did Holtz kill him or throw him to whatever animal might have been sliding by. Slow starvation? Torture?
Holtz was a broken and twisted soul. God knows what kind of ‘justice’ he felt Connor must have deserved, being Angel’s son.
But he wasn’t just Angel’s son.
Cordelia would never change the events of Connor’s birth, his conception, because both of those things, and everything in between, resulted in the most beautiful baby she’d ever held, ever seen.
She wouldn’t change a thing, but….she had a stake in that baby. He was hers, too. Maybe not of her body. She wouldn’t ever compare her loss to Angel’s.
But it is a loss to her.
She lost that warm, strong body in her arms, those smiles and that smell…
She catches a sob in the bottom of her throat as her eyes blur.
-that smell at the top of his head.
She lost that.
She never thought in terms of being a mother. She wasn’t.
But he was still hers.
And now he’s not.
Because of Wesley.
She immediately shies from the thought of him.
It hurts.
His doofus smile and his glasses that swallowed half his face and his not quite-innocent looks at Fred.
He did this. He put these events in motion.
She still can’t –
How?
Why?
WHY?
She bangs her head against the wall and thinks of Angel in the room behind her back.
There’s a black hole in the space between them.
She’s in the Before - before Connor was taken, before Angel tried to kill the man they both trusted with their lives, before Wesley did the worst thing one human being can do to another.
Angel is now in the After.
After Connor.
She doesn’t know how to bridge that space.
She does know that a choice is in front of her. To push down her own profound loss and get swallowed up by Angel’s. To be what he needs her to be, where he needs her.
When he needs her.
Whatever he needs.
Because she knows that if there was ever a time they could lose him, it would be now. The chasm she feels looming will swallow him whole
She needs to hang on to him, with both hands, as tight as she can, anyway she can.
And to do that, she needs to let go of Wesley.
So she does.
And, because of her own empty arms, and the teddy bear she brought back that will never be placed next to a slumbering, sweetly gurgling baby, it’s easier than she thought.
Like falling.
She takes a deep, cleansing breath and pushes up on the balls of her feet, straightening away from the wall.
Turning, she walks the short distance back to Angel’s door and turns the doorknob, entering.
~end~
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no subject
Date: 2010-11-16 12:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-16 05:50 am (UTC)I almost envy you, because you're reading them for the first time. lol