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Title: Recovering Satellites
Author: Evette (wickedprincess3@gmail.com)
Summary: Cordelia, Angel, memory loss, destiny, love, and some minor career planning.
Rating: PG for language
Disclaimer: All belong to Mutant Enemy, Fox, The WB, UPN blahblah not me.

Cordelia isn't delicate. There are a million words Angel could use to describe her, ranging from bitchy to gorgeous, and so many more. However, delicate and fragile were not in there. They didn't exist in the same plane with Cordelia Chase.

Yet he wanted to touch her gently, to wrap her in something soft and protective. She seemed like brittle glass, sitting alone on that bed. Her legs dangling from the edge of the bed, her feet covered in a pair of oversized sweat sock. She seemed a statuette on the verge of shattering and tearing him apart in the process.

"You can come all the way in ‘cause the lurking? Kinda creepy." She didn't bother to look up from the tiara she was holding; she waved a hand directing Angel to his proper place.

"I was a beauty queen?" She looks at him, her lips pursed together, and shoves the crown in front of him accusingly.

"Princess actually… well I think you were a..." he stopped and picked up one of the yearbooks that were shoved into the dozens of boxes around the room. It seems to take him ages to find it, but there she is smiling with a different crown perched on her head, flowers loading down her arms.

She stares at the page for a moment before she crinkles up her nose and throws herself back on the bed.

"I had better hair then," she states simply.

Angel nods. Cordy rolls her eyes.

"You know you're not supposed to *agree* with me," she says, hiding her smile, as she glares at him.

"Well you did," he smiles. Oh, it was so easy to fall into this with her, these easy laughs and button pushing. Her socked feet pushing into his thighs and he could feel himself wanting to lean into her.

Her.

He had to take a moment to pause the world and remind himself that the woman sitting next to him didn't know the girl he wanted to fall into. Her body, her breath, her scent, but none of the thoughts and feelings. No memories that made her the actual Cordelia.

"Lorne and Fred are working on something, a spell that might be able to help you with your memory." He stands up so quickly that he knocks the tiara to the floor. She just nods as she leans over; picking up the crown, she has to stop to untangle the wires of the carpet from the studs of the crown.

**

Fred was sitting in the center of the lobby, one book balanced on her lap, another in her right hand (her left holding a large, brightly colored drink cup), and a third book propped up on the sofa next to Lorne, who was currently rubbing his temples while staring at the ceiling.

"I assume the look of pained frustration on your face means you have good news?" Angel asked, looking down at the demon.

"Two centuries and no sense of humor yet. That's very sad." Lorne didn't bother to look up at him, but just continued to rub his temples, "You realize I have been on the phone for hours dealing with persons who either want to rip my horns off and use them as coat hooks or want to marry me to their unattractive demonic spawn?"

Fred looked up, "Coat hooks?"

"Okay, maybe they didn't say coat hooks, Freddikins," Lorne sighed and sat up straight, "But a little appreciation could be shown."

Angel picked up the book from the couch and sat down with a thud. Fred squeaked when Angel sat the book down on the floor.

"Great, now I have to find my place again," she mumbled between sips of her soda.

"Look guys I'm… Cordy is upstairs and she has to be scared and we need to help her right?"

Everyone just nodded. Fred went back to flipping through her book, taking a short break to call Gunn and ask him to please bring her some donuts - from the good Krispy Kreme and not the one inside the gas station a few blocks away. Lorne went back to making phone calls; he occasionally screamed and threw the phone across the room with a yelp.

"Don't ask," he said, plainly staring at the phone in horror.

**

Gunn returned with an ax covered in demon viscera, and donuts in hand sometime later. Angel was sitting in his office pushing papers around the desk attempting "research".

"No luck I take it?" he asked, peeking his head in the room, with a nod to the very asleep Fred and the very on his way to being drunk Lorne.

Angel nodded. For a moment the other man stopped, his lip bitten as if trying to find the way to arrange the words he wanted to say but said nothing. He just nodded and closed the door behind him.

On Cordy's first night back, Fred had suggested taking her to a doctor just in case there was neurological damage. However, Gunn pointed out, what kind of brain damage can a person get from being a higher being? Some sort of accident on the stairway to heaven?

Angel slipped out the office and stepped quietly up the stairs. He could hear her breathing through the door. Slow soft breaths punctuated with occasional snores.

He'd try to comfort himself with the fact that at least she was here again.

Because being here was so very important. It imparted substance and reason. It gave Angel the illusion that his universe might eventually tilt back into some semblance of balance.

He was aware that it was an illusion. It wasn't one he entertained much. Just in these brief moments when he watched Cordy sleep. He thinks of her breath against his neck.

He entertains them most when he stands on rooftops watching his son tear into vampires with a sneer on his face. Connor’s moves are cold and calculated from a lifetime of living ready to kill, but the look on his face, the glint in his eyes, is all rage. Angel has delusions of that not being there either, of shaking the world like children's toy and it all falling back into place.

**

She was awake when he came in. Her door cracked open, with the radio playing softly as she flipped through an old glossy magazine. Angel could smell the perfume samples as she flipped each page.

"Wow, so vampires actually *are* nocturnal?"

"Don't really have a choice," he shrugged. She smiled easily and pulled her feet up to make room for Angel.

"Any progress?"

"Memories? Nada. Zilch. I thought I remembered something earlier but then I realized it was just a movie I watched this morning, unless I was a hooker with a heart of gold?"

Angel tried hard to suppress a smile.

"Oh God! I *am* a hooker and you're my pimp and gave me fucking awful hair!"

Her eyes were big and she seemed to be about to rip his throat out. He finally put his hands in front of his face trying to hide his smile and be reassuring,

"You are *not* a hooker." She still looked at him for a second before going back to flipping the pages of her magazine.

"Besides, if I was a hooker, I'd be all high priced and fancy. I sure as hell wouldn't need your undead ass to pimp me." She didn't glance up, just continued to aimlessly flip her pages. As she slid farther back into her pillows her knees began to dig into Angel's side. Soft pressure that wasn't uncomfortable but reminded Angel of her presence, as his hand instinctively rested on her thigh. She just smiled a little.

"And you're sure you're not my pimp?" she asked this time with a slight glint in her eye.

He wanted to fall asleep in there with her. His hands would wrap tightly around the hem of her t-shirt and her back would curve into his stomach.

Instead he took what seemed to be the longest walk down the hallway where he collapsed into himself, full of dreams and illusions that would haunt him when he woke up.

**

Fred woke him up, with a big grin on her face, waving papers so furiously that they began flying from her hand and landing with slow swoops on the bed and floor.

"This has to be good news," he muttered, pushing himself up on one elbow and pulling the sheet farther up around him with the other arm.

"I found something that, according a friend of Lorne's," a loud sarcastic snort came from the hallway at the world 'friend'. Fred stopped for a second and glanced in the direction of the sound. "Anyway, a spell; Gunn and Lorne are going to get the stuff we need for it. It's supposed to aid in supernatural memory loss."

Angel nodded groggily as she continued to explain the way in which the spell was done. Something with herbs and possibly the sacrificing of penguins, he wasn't clear on that.

Fred stood there for a moment staring at Angel expectantly. Finally Lorne peeked in and said,

"Fred doll, I think Angel may be suffering from a case of the modests or something, let's skedaddle." Fred put her hand over her mouth embarrassedly and bolted from the room.

As Angel descended the stairs, he could see Cordelia sitting at the lobby desk twirling a phone cord around absent mindedly.

She gave him a smile when she saw him.

“I got tired of being useless, lounging girl. Not that it’s not an interesting and valid career choice, but one can only wear sweat socks and read fashion rags so many days before it becomes lifestyle rather than recovery.” She smiled again and, as she pursed her lips for a second, Angel noticed the light red painted on her lips. Cordy had always smelled like make-up, a chemical veneer painted onto a stone canvas.

“So you’re doing…?” Small talk had never been Angel’s strong suit. Conversation was but another way to connect, words making little pathways between people, intersections that Angel never really learned to navigate. Of course, Cordelia was all chatter and words. She used them as another kind of shield and dressing.

**

The spell was simple enough, seemingly. Gunn and Lorne were setting things up under Fred’s, at times, confusing directions.

“No, wait! The rats’ eyes go to the left of the ritual talisman thingy.” A large circle of various things (animal parts, herbs, and talismans) was soon made in the center of the lobby.

Cordy sat in the center smiling, but Angel could see her hands shaking just a little bit as Fred read from the book.

There wasn’t a spark, a moment when it was obvious that Cordelia was well Cordelia again. Rather, she slowly stood up and looked around the room, her hand over her mouth, and bolted out of the hotel.

The door slammed loudly and echoed throughout the hotel. Fred asked,

“Do you think that means it worked?”

**

“So what do we do?” Lorne asked, pushing papers around on the lobby desk.

“Well, if the spell didn’t work she’s out there with no memory and yeah no memory.” Gunn frowned and reached out for Fred’s hand.

“No, it worked. I know it had to work. I mean it felt like it worked. Didn’t it?” Fred looked around the lobby uncertainly.

There was silence for a moment and she said, “Well, it seemed like it did to me”

“I’ll find her,” Angel said, as he walked out of the office, pulling on his jacket.

“Yeah, good plan what with the sun and the turning to dust, hope that works out for you.” Gunn answered.

“Sewers,” Angel answered back loudly disappearing into the basement.

**

This was not his best plan ever. He could smell her, he thought. He followed an insane zigzagging path throughout the city. Occasionally he looked through the grates to see how long until he could come out.

Unfortunately he reeked of sewer and his feet were wet and he was pretty sure this coat was going to have to be dry cleaned.

The sun had just gone down when, seeing her sitting alone on a park bench, he pulled himself out of the sewer. There was something about the way she sat, or maybe just the way he looked at her, but the world always seemed to center around Cordy. She pulled everything into her orbit, for better or worse.

He stood a few feet behind the bench, just watching her. She kept tucking her hair behind her ear and looking up into the sky or down into her lap. She turned around and when she saw him her eyes closed briefly in annoyance and her shoulders fell.

“Can I sit there?” he asked.

“Sure.” She turned away from him and Angel could see a small bag in her lap with smudges of pinks and blues on it. She wouldn’t look at him though. She just kept looking from her lap to the sky and back, her hands twisting around the worn edges of the plastic bag.

“Shopping?”

She turned to look at him, her eyes even more narrow and he finally saw the soft puffy redness around her eyes. Her cheeks washed out.

“You reek,” she finally said. Angel slid closer to her; she just turned and glared at him some more.

“The spell worked?” he asked, with a heavy, exasperated sigh.

“Yes, you idiot, obviously the spell worked. Oh boy, did the damn spell work.” Her eyes were big and she was near yelling by the end of the sentence. Though, at least she was finally looking at him.

Her lips pursed together and she played with a miniature tube of lipstick in the bag.

“So not my shade,” she said, dabbling a little on the back of her hand. She paused for a second and threw the tube back into the bag and looked at Angel again.

"You know people always say that they just knew they were destined for great things and that it was meant to be, but no one ever says that when something crappy happens to them."

"Destiny is…. Destiny"

"Deep much?" She gave him a half smile and continued, "But you know crappy things are never destiny are they? Like if you fell down and broke your nose and lost an eye? That isn't destiny, that's just you having a shitty day."

"I think you lost me or you didn't but… what?"

"Do you know where I was?" she asked sharply, clicking the heel of her shoe against the bench leg.

"You were a higher being. I used the …"

"Yeah yeah you and electro slut, saw it" She waved her hand dismissively and continued, "But yeah higher being which well sucked."

She stopped and Angel wished he could see her eyes now, she had turned from him and he could see her hands wiping around her eyes, then she finally turned back to him.

"I could see you. I could watch you. I saw everything you did, everything you had done, and- I think- everything you're ever going to do. I saw it, I felt it. I felt your joy when you raped Drusilla and the sorrow you felt when you lost Connor. I just…"

"You've always know who I am, what I was," he said quietly.

"Oh I know, I knew and let me say, that whole promise to stake you if you ever look even moderately perfectly happy? So very extremely much on." She looked at him sadly, and he could barely see the small black lines of make-up making a trail down her cheek. Finally, in a quiet voice, she said,

"I don't have the visions anymore."

"Well, just because you haven't had one in a while…"

"No. I'm not… there was. I don't understand it much but I knew I couldn't help you where I was and I could see that you needed me. Or I knew it or felt it. Anyway, I had a choice and I chose to come back."

"The visions were your price?"

"They said that… Skip when he made me a demon said that I was never supposed to have this. I wasn't supposed to be vision girl so now they took that away."

"Well that's good, I mean no blinding headaches or mysterious demon powers."

Angel knew as he spoke that there was no bright side to this and that as much as Cordelia had hated the visions and was confused by becoming part demon that taking that away from her was taking away everything that had built her the past few years.

"You could act."

"I didn't leave being a Goddess to act." He loved that she could talk about all of this as if it were merely a drastic career change. Like should she be a dentist or a lawyer? College or Beauty School? Acting or Goddess-hood?

"You're still valuable. That's not who you were or are," he stumbled around his words, trying to find the ones that would make her look at him with something other than confusion and spite.

"Like I don't know that? I'm not some self-esteem case."

Angel's only choice at this point, mostly in self-defense, was to look deeply and terribly confused.

"It wasn't that it was me, or maybe it was. I don't know. But if that wasn't supposed to be who I am then who am I supposed to be?" Her voice trailed off and she looked up at the sky briefly. Angel didn't follow her gaze but just watched the way the light framed her face, blue and black shadows now smeared down her cheeks, the clump of hair behind her ear stuck together with pits of blue powder, tears, and sweat.

"I know you won't find it on a park bench or running away." He could see her body tense up, her shoulders thrown back defensively. Her armor was up and Angel wondered what, if anything, she would let get through.

"I thought I had found it in you!"

Angel had been wrong; there was no armor or paint on the woman in front of him. No protective veneer, and all that remained was a pair of slim shoulders thrown back and a voice that screamed pent up accusations and resentment. There were no tears now and the smudges beneath her eyes looked like war paint and battle scars.

"I was vision girl. I helped people. I saved the world and all that. That was my thing. Okay, so maybe I wasn't all Superhero Girl myself but I was like Superhero Man's Girl Friday. I was the one that made sure the Superhero knew where to go. Without me the Superhero sucked!"

"Hey!"

"Well, you did! Okay, you were in the bottom of the ocean during most of my tenure as a higher being type, but also I may be having some weird anger issues at the moment." She clasped her hands together in her lap and took a deep breath, "Okay, not any better," she gave him a sarcastic smile.

"We'll figure this out," he said simply, sliding across the bench, his hand wandered closer toward hers. Her palm opened slowly, allowing his fingers to wrap around hers.

"I'll figure this out," she said, squeezing his hand, patting her eyes with her free hand.

She let him walk her back to the hotel. His hand wrapped around hers, they didn't speak and as soon as the door opened she bolted to her room.

**

He watched her try, and try and try. At first, she pursued regaining her visions with the same persistence that she had pursued everything else Angel had witnessed of her life.

The Conduits did nothing. She made a choice, she wasn't meant to be the girl she was.

"Her ascension was not even a part of our plan, *Vampire*"

As if his being a vampire is what fucked all this up, rather than random acts of the world converging together to create random events.

Or something.

He thought about what she told him about the world she visited when she met Skip.

"You were in a corner, crazy ever since Doyle died, chained, running across the floor like a rat. The saddest thing was, when I looked into your eyes, it was just… despair. You didn't know me, or anything other than pain."

She had tried to fix his life and he so desperately wanted to do that for her. Every day she would be sitting at the desk answering the phone a and taking numbers with a big book in her lap.

Then one day Angel noticed that there were no books. She sat at the desk penciling something into a notebook.

"Did you find out something?" She looked up at him and thoughtfully tucked her pencil behind her ear.

"I learned that you really suck at keeping up with the finances. Well actually, I already knew that, but I’m starting to think I was sent back to make sure you actually stayed in the black and that you and Fred wouldn't be out on the street."

"I thought we were doing pretty well, I mean Fred was in charge this summer and she … "

"Is a smart scientist that couldn't balance accounts if you stapled a calculator to her hand?" she replied, tapping her nails on the counter, a slight frown on her face. He looked around briefly before pulling a chair up to the front of the desk where he could sit facing her. She had already pulled the pencil out from behind her ear and was back to her books; one hand quickly wrote things down, while the other poked at a calculator with neatly polished brown nails.

She didn’t say anything else about the visions and Angel didn’t know how to approach the topic. Some days she would be sitting in front of the desk, books open with the phone cradled on her shoulder and her fingers tapping with irritation on the desk. He would get, at most, a wave of acknowledgement.

She was there everyday, smiling, and working, and yet she said so little to him. She noticed him, smiles and nods. She told him what to do, but then Cordelia had always told *everyone* what to do.

Something felt off, off in the sense that his universe wasn't in complete upheaval. It was, with some large exceptions, okay. That was… that meant bad horrible things were coming. For things to seem this okay something somewhere had to be terribly, horribly wrong and whatever that is was definitely getting ready to bite him on the ass.

There was no case to work tonight. The phones were silent; Gunn had left, promising Fred that the drive-in was replaying X-men even though Paquin was just wrong for Rogue.

He hears her upstairs, her stereo is turned up and her bare feet pad across the floor. It's only a set of stairs and a walk down the hallway but it feels like miles and Angel doesn't think he's able to walk that tightrope to her. He hates looking at her and thinking that again he had failed, left her hating him and that while in another reality she had fixed his world, he was able to do nothing for hers.

Each slow step to the room he heard her voice in his head. Half the playful bickering of old and the softness she had given him in quiet painful moments. He realizes that theirs is not a story of love, written in flowers and hearts. Theirs is a story of need and leaning, it reminds him of cheesy songs that play on diner jukeboxes.

The door is open and she is standing in front of a large pile of clothing, a blue plastic shopping bag full of clothes hangers on the floor next to her feet. The music is too loud and she doesn't hear him when he pushes the door further open, to the point that the knob bangs into the wall. He knocked on the wall a few times before he finally shouted her name.

"Angel," she said flatly.

"Cordelia," this false cordiality is killing him. She motions to an empty wooden desk chair in the corner of the room and he slides into it, his feet resting on the small nightstand. She had turned down the radio and was staring at him expectantly. After a few moments of painful silence she asks,

"You wanted…?" her eyebrows rose as she finished the sentence.

"To see how you were doing. I mean we don't get to talk much and I just was worried and …" he shrugged, letting himself trail off, trying to read her by her reactions.

She sighed.

Oh, a sigh means so many things, though so rarely does it mean anything good.

"I'm fine, Angel, thanks for asking," she said bluntly, and went back to hanging up clothes, each one thrown into a stack on the bed.

"Have you found out anything else about the visions?"

"This *is* your version of small talk isn't it?" She threw a pair of slacks down on the bed in frustration.

"No, this is my version of trying to find out what the hell is going on with you."

"What's going on is right now I'm trying to get this room into some sort of order that isn’t a combination of migrant hobo girl and absolute chaos. Other than that, peachy! Keen! Super! Great!"

"Why do I think you're lying?"

"You want truth. Okay, Angel, I will give you truth because I've got nothing else to give at the moment anyway." She sat down on the bed, a stack of clothing sliding off onto the floor in the process.

"I gave up."

"On the visions?"

"What do you think, dumbass?" Yes, the visions." She frowned and her voice became softer, "I looked. I did. I even tried to contact the C conduit thingers myself, but it was silent."

"That's dangerous."

"Thank you, Mr. Obvious. That I knew. Anyway, I was standing there going, 'gee, this fucking sucks,' and I thought about something…" she paused again, her hands tapping on the fabric of the bed, "The visions were important and I'm still not sure what my place is supposed to be in a world where I don't have them but I do know what it is."

"I'm sure that makes sense to you," he nodded at her, and couldn't help but smile when she kicked him lightly in the shin.

"No, it does make sense. Look I thought that the visions were my destiny, until Skip said they weren't my destiny, but then I chose to make them my destiny, and then when I was on the higher plane all I knew was that I needed to help you, that things weren't going to be all right. I probably should have rethought the entire, 'let me go back whatever the price to me blahblahblah whatever thing' .."

"You actually said that?"

"Okay it wasn't so much that as it was "I want to go back right the God damn hell now' but the other sounded so much more pretty and Lifetime movie of the week, didn't it?"

Angel nodded and tried to keep from laughing.

"But you chose to go to the higher plane, you were happy there."

"Of course I was happy there. I mean all I did was watch, watch, watch. Which is fine but so boring. And what did I watch? You, and, with the exception of some damn good divine intervention on your ass in Vegas, I was completely useless"

"I'm sure they had a purpose for you being there."

The notion that she had left where she was for him was finally settling in on him and it felt like a ton of bricks. Cordelia could often suffer from clouded decision making but this was, well it made him want to shake her and ask what the hell she was thinking. Ignoring the fact that she was, well, telling him what she was thinking, but even then Angel wanted to explain that he could be no one's reason or purpose. Most days he had to battle with himself to explain why the hell he still bothered; he could not shoulder the weight of one more person’s expectations only to fail them, again.

Then again, maybe he had already failed her. He failed her by not telling her she was just a little girl from Sunnydale, go be an actress, have a life, get a husband, be a star and never think about vampires or Hellmouths. Definitely don't think about the half-demon in the corner that fell in love with you the moment you walked into the room. Sure as fuck don't think about all those kids you saw die at your graduation.

"Yeah, I'm sure they do but… I knew when I watched that I could do more good being here with you than I could sitting there waiting for some invisible powers to tell me what to do. So now I'm visionless, which, you know, was a part of the bargain." She shrugged with a small frown, "Which isn't good, but I still know that no matter what Destiny says I'm supposed to be here. Destiny is stupid"

Only Cordelia Chase would so boldly proclaim that, yes, all the Powers of the world, Destiny and centuries of prophecy were stupid. That she, in fact, knew far better than they what was best for herself and possibly the rest of the universe.

"You still shouldn't have come back for me."

"Don't flatter yourself. I mean, yes, you are Mr. Champion Guy, but still I came back for me. So that I would know I was doing something. You're a tool," she finished brightly with a slight wink.

"I am so tired of that word." He was, ‘Champion,’ implied something Angel wasn't. It implied that he was actually able to do anything of importance.

"Well, aren't we all." she said, "but you are a champion, Angel," she stopped and blinked, "Okay, I know that was corny but it's true. While I will stake your going evil ass in less than a heartbeat I still… yeah. I know you can do good, Angel, I have and if the powers don't think I'm champion material, because I decide where I want to be then fuck that." Her language was harsh but her words were stilted and soft, as if begging him to reassure her that she hadn't made a mistake in believing him to be a worthy mission.

The air was thick, so many questions he wanted to ask her. Things he wanted to say to her. He thinks he loves her; he knows that he needs her.

She isn't a part of him, she doesn't complete him the way Buffy did, two halves of a soul and other poetic nonsense. She would never be able to rip his soul from him, and they both were wrapped up in too much armor to give each other their hearts. No destiny or promises of forever.

Instead, they were flesh and stability in a maelstrom that would capsize both of them, something, like the rest of life, that existed between perfection and despair.

He leaned forward and slid his hand up her thigh and she easily wrapped her fingers through his.

"I don’t know what's going to happen, Angel, and I won't give you any reassurances that I didn't screw this up in grand style." He squeezed her hand tighter and they fell silent. He isn't able to promise her anything and he won't. His promises are feeble and only fail anyway.

"It will be okay."

And maybe, this time it will be. Hell, he can almost make himself believe it.

(the end)