Title: Revealing (1/1)
Author: Morgan R.
Email: Lshallot@juno.com
Rating: PG
Summary: The Cordelia Retrospective continues- Cordy and Oz talk as little as possible
Feedback: You know I want it. You can feel it in your bones.
Episode: Lovers Walk
Author's Note: Ouch.
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She was staring at the wall.
This was, of course, nothing new. She couldn't look at herself, seeing bruises or bandages, because it might mean accepting what had happened. She couldn't look at the door, because there was no telling who might walk through, looking at her with pain or anger or condescension. She couldn't look out the window, because it was behind her.
So she stared at the wall, a small portion of plaster which she had been staring at when she first heard Xander's footsteps on the hospital linoleum, when she first realized that nothing was ever going to be enough again. She had a feeling that she would always recognize that patch of wall, imprinted with the unfairness of it all. If the hospital should be demolished and scattered and she someday found that patch, she would recognize it.
Whether she would cry over it like a lost friend or destroy it with all her strength was somewhat uncertain.
Regardless, she was staring at her flat companion when she heard someone enter the room and sit in the chair beside her bed. Her wall encouraged her to speak. It was with a weary reluctance that she agreed.
"How long have you known?"
"Since the first time."
She turned, unwillingly looking away from her wall, and focused on Oz with unhappy eyes.
"How long?" she asked again, plaintive in a way that might have surprised anyone else- but Oz was rarely surprised.
"Homecoming." he replied, his expression unchanging, blank as a wall.
"Right." She just looked, not anticipating a response of expression or speech. The company of her wall had lessened her expectations.
"What tipped you off?" She was slightly surprised at his question. Not its content, but its existence- the wall just was, and asked nothing of her.
"Well, if you could smell Willow's fear, then you had to smell him all over her. Probably wouldn't even have to be a werewolf for that. Just suspicious. Of course, I wasn't."
For the first time, his eyes clouded over with some measure of emotion. "I'm not someone who speaks up very often. I might have, if I had thought-" his eyes flickered down towards her abdomen, covered with bandages and blankets but fairly shouting through the sterile room that it was open and hurting and important.
"Could you do me one favor? In recompense?" The fact that he owed her nothing was insignificant. He should know better than to hand out leverage so freely.
"What?"
"Just make her wait, okay? I can't be the only one getting righteously indignant, here. If people see you hugging her in the hallway, then they forget about my tragic circumstances and think I'm just blowing things out of proportion. I know you mate for life and whatever, but give me time to get some amount of status back."
His forehead creased, softly, barely. "How can I do that?"
"I don't care about your dependency issues. Just let her live in the land of self-recrimination until people stop laughing at me when I walk past them in the hallway."
"How long will that be?"
Cordelia did some quick calculations of attention span times loser factor divided by former popularity, her fingers fluttering over the blanket. "Christmas. Give me that long, and I'll be fine."
He stood up. "I'll try. But that's a long time-"
"For the night to live without the moon? Shut up. Did you taste him on her lips? Doesn't that bother you at all?"
"It bothers me."
He slipped out like dusk, and she was relieved to turn back to her wall. It asked nothing, gave nothing. Just plaster-
-which she could still taste in her mouth, feel in her eyes. It had coated her as she lay there, settling over her skin as quickly as it could, appalled at her lack of modesty. What sort of respectable young woman allowed herself to be so exposed, cut open and wounded and broken? How could she ever let him know she cared? Wasn't this the inevitable conclusion to such a sloppy spilling over of emotion? The plaster had hushed her, blinded her, granting some measure of comfort in the midst of being thrown down and torn apart.
It wasn't until several hours later in the hospital that anyone bothered to mention that she had been impaled. Somehow, in the white colored shame, she hadn't really noticed.
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finis
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