ethrosdemon ||| Buffy & Angel

Regrets, We All Got `Em.
by ethrosdemon.

SUMMARY: Cordelia looks back on a decision she'd made, and thinks about life without it.
DISTRIBUTION: list archives and people who ask or bribe.
DISCLAIMER: Joss made it up, too bad he is an incompetent ninny. Mutant Enemy and others own the rights. No suing please.
Rating: R for the theme, but maybe lower.
SPOILERS: 'Happy Anniversary' but it might not be really S2 and 3 of Buffy.
DEDICATION: To Ragna who issued the challenge, and I bet this isn't what she had in mind AT ALL. To Lar who encouraged the madness.
NOTES: This is an answer to challenge #161 at YGTS.
NOTES 2: This might displease some sensibilities. Don't read if you like Ralph Reed.

Wesley sitting there across from me just doing his knot on a log routine, in the wheelchair, tea at hand, reading. Him and the reading reading reading, it numbs my brain, and I'm doing my nails for the love of all things Blahnik. There isn't even anything to research, give it a rest already.

Sometimes I wish that if I think hard enough that my thoughts might pop right into someone else's head. If I concentrate on The Thing long enough, he will get it, and I won't ever have to tell him out loud, with my mouth, the words hooking on the back of my throat and stumbling over my tongue. It will hop right over there, and I won't be the only one who knows.

Because I know now as well as I know that this color pink was not THE color that I will have to tell him. Didn't pick him. Just like everything else in my life, most things in my life now, he just happened to me.

I know I can't ride it out alone this time. Not with the Angel thing, and the he and Gunn thing, and the fear of Darla snatching me off the street thing. Stress makes me break out, and this colossal zit right at he left corner of my nose will attest.

And that's not really even the point. I need to spill. Need to be able to SAY IT and not sit in the dark at night going over scene after scene of someone discovering it in another scroll or a cup of tea leaves. Confession is good for the soul, and we all need to take care of ours, even if that is one of the ultimate corniest expressions of all time, and trust me, I've heard them all between Angel and Wes. That one's like a priest t-shirt slogan.

Half-truth and partial lies in a chain since I started the new Cordelia programme. Yeah, dying and money shortage are on my mind, but that's not always the reason I fall apart, hysterical and weeping on my couch with Wes cradling me, rocking me, mumbling soft English- guy words.

Carrying around the guilt of the omission. That pisses me right off too. I mean, it's my goddamned life. If I want to lie about it, I should be free and clear to do that. No need for all the self-hatred. Who came up with this system?

Why should I have to burden others with my own baggage just to make my life easier? There he sits giggling like the idiot he is over some pun the way stodgy demonologist made in the Tralr demon caption. Shouldn't he be able to do that without glancing over at me and REMEMBERING. Shaded eyes and dropped mouth, and I just couldn't take it.

I don't need their pity and "it's gonna be ok"s. It's not like it's something they could ever in a this lifetime understand. Understand beyond the movie of the week and Sally Jesse Raphael spewage. Angel would've been the safer bet not so long ago on the empathy angle. Not that I'm like him one miniscule little bit. But, at least a little part of the recognition of the guilt would be the same. That bridge burnt, and now that I think about it, wouldn't THAT be just the tid- bit for Angelus to throw back on me when he makes his long-awaited reappearance?

Might as well just take some personal time. Tell them it's the anniversary of a family death. Not a lie.

Hole up with Dennis, cry it out, and come back and pretend it never happened for another year.

Work myself up with all the "I'm saving the innocent" crapola like I always do. Keep myself in check with the self-congratulatory back- patting over being the link to the higher plane. Daze myself with the fate thoughts and loops. Numb the guilt with the whole it wasn't really your choice, it was meant to be that way spiel.

Everything happens for a reason. What doesn't kill me makes me stronger.

Keep away from children's clothing stores and the diaper isle of the grocery store.

Slip the atavan out of the medicine cabinet when I think about minivans and PTA meetings, soccer matches and daycare, toys strewn across the living room floor and Barney blaring out of the tv. Try not to shake out the whole bottle when the images of Xander tossing a ball in the yard or beaming at a ballet recital cascade in, his facial expressions so real, vivid after all this time. Parenting on the Hellmouth is a bad thing, teen parenting all the worse. Better to be avoided, even if he would make the best dad ever and could've kept me warm at night and there could've been one or two more little Xanders or Xanderettes after a while to snuggle with us early mornings or late nights. And, really, he might have wanted to know about the first one.

This life is my life, the fork in the road way down the line where the bend is far in the distance. Can't let the maybes, the yeah-buts weigh me down. Gotta be the strong one now. Check Wes's stitches and make sure Gunn eats, and remember that's enough most of the time.

I always was the strong one anyway. Do what I have to do to survive, keep it together, not break into a million pieces just because it's THAT day. Besides, how ridiculous would I look breaking out in some depression era blues song in the middle of a sales pitch? It might get us more work with the raving nutjob set actually. The clinically depressed seer, tourist attraction for demons all over the lower 48. Demons don't usually have swiss accounts. They could pay us with goods and services maybe. Therapy?

"Cordelia? Are you quite alright?" Nail polish bottle tipped over and "Cosmic Glow" puddle flowing under the palm of my hand. And now might be share time after all.



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