-----------------------------------
Disclaimer: Joss thought 'em up, but I'm just taking them out to play.
Summary: An alternate version of BtVS' Season 3 ep, "The Wish". This time when Cordy makes the wish, she unknowingly drags Angel back with her...
Author's Note: Wow, I must have written this...*counts*...well, years ago. Circa 1999, was it? I uploaded it onto FF.N in one huge chunk cause I was too lazy to separate the fic into its respective chapters. Looking back at it now, it irritates me. So here I am, pounding away at my laptop again for the newly edited, newly formatted Version 2.0 of Desperate Acts.
Old readers, voila! New readers...enjoy!
Words in indicate thoughts.
-----------------------------------
Desperate Acts
by
Wravyn
Prologue
It was a dark, melancholy sort of night, as all her nights these days seemed to be. The moon...but never mind the moon. She wasn't looking anyway.
Cordelia Chase sat, silent and pensive, alone on the hood of her car. Her arms were wrapped tightly around her legs and her chin rested on her knees. Her warm brown eyes, usually alive with sardonic arrogance, now remained closed and guarded.
She was thinking, as was fairly usual since the breakup, of him. Xander "Lying Scumbag" Harris. It was crazy, irrational, even, to dwell on him so. He had cheated on her, and with his best friend, no less, and she had dumped and forgotten worthier guys for less.
But the memory of his awkward smiles and clumsy kisses were still fresh in her mind. Floppy-haired fashion victim that he was, Xander Harris proved to be more enduring a presence than she would have given him credit for. She finally admitted to herself the truth that she'd been so afraid of.
I still love
him.
She had been more hurt by the
kiss he had shared with Willow than she let on. No one had been
around to see her cry; deep, gut-wrenching sobs brought on by the pain of his
betrayal. The ache in her side a callous symbol of what he'd done, she
swore to herself that she would forget about him and move on. So she
ignored his presence at the hospital, left his phone calls unanswered, refused
to accept his fervent apologies. As a final touch, she burned all pictures
she had of him, of her, of their time together.
But the love she denied she felt for him was immaterial, and ran deeper than a couple of photographs. She couldn't get him out of her mind. In the eyes of the world, Cordy had bounced back from her relationship with no apparent scars. She had gone back to her old self - Queen C with her admiring flock of sheep. Each time her relationship with Xander came up in conversation she laughed it off, often with a scornful remark at his expense. Whenever she chanced to pass him in the halls she looked away deliberately and put on a disinterested face.
But
at night she went up the hill to the spot where they used to sneak for cuddles
and kisses, and she'd think about what she'd lost. The moon was ever the
sole witness to her solace.
In time, his calls had
stopped, and he no longer appeared at the Bronze. Life went on, in
all appearances, but still she thought of Xander - still thought of his arms around her, still
thought of their passionate kisses. And she thought of Willow, of
her uncharacteristic duplicity, and her anger and jealousy would rise up inside
of her until she could taste their bitterness in her mouth.
But she still loved him.
* * *
"I never would have looked twice at Xander if Buffy hadn't made him marginally cooler by hanging out with him."
"Really?"
"Yeah, I swear! I wish...I-I wish..."
"Yes?"
Cordelia swallowed a sigh. She'd done more than her share of what-ifs and maybes lately, and wished herself to pieces trying to undo what could not be undone. In her heart of hearts, there was only one wish she would have come true if she could.
"I wish things had happened differently."
And
at this Anya laughed.
Cordelia, her mind on Xander, did not see that her face had changed.
"Done."
* * *
Angel paced up and down and back and forth the floor of the mansion, his mind as haphazard as the mess that was strewn around him. He hadn't had the heart to do much since it happened, and cleaning up was at the bottom of his list of priorities. Buffy. Breakup. Brooding. The three B's floating over and around him, permeating his every pore with the slow torture of their existence.
The sun shone garishly
outside. Normally he would be sleeping, but this was not normally,
and his mind had been preoccupied for days. If only she hadn't broken
up with me, he brooded. If I hadn't killed Jenny Calendar,
she would still love me. I would still have Buffy.
A
part of Angel secretly wondered if that were true. What the two had
shared was love, that was undeniable. But even before the loss of
his soul and his shift to the Angelus persona, he had known that their
relationship was doomed. A Slayer and a vampire...the mere thought
was ridiculous, a fallacy. It was just
not meant to be.
But I love her, he thought in anguish. He had loved her from the first moment he'd seen her, all laughter and innocence. Wrong as he knew it was, he could not help but fall for her, and he loved her still. And now she won't have anything to do with me.
He dropped himself into a nearby chair and covered his face with his hands.
I wish things were different.
* * *
Unbeknownst to Angel, at the same time he was making his wish,
Cordelia was making the exact same one on the other side of town.
So when the spell that was to alter Cordelia's reality acted upon
her, it also pulled in the vampire.
-----------------------------------
Read on sports fans...it's going to take some time for me to go through and fix the whole fic, but I'll post one more part before I go do some work. --Wravyn