Happy birthday, coffeeandink! Hope you have a wonderful year.

***

I had vague thoughts about last night's Angel, but they came out in fic instead of analysis. Go figure.



Simpler Wishes

They go to the nursing home again, to make arrangements for Cordelia's body. Shrouded in sheets, her body looks small and her hair limp; already she smells of death. Wes stands at his shoulder, and Angel is grateful.

"However she or the Powers did it, she felt alive," Angel tells Wes. "Not just a projection." She was solid in his arms as she kissed him, heart racing, blood running close to the surface. He can’t dismiss it as unreal, as another ocean-dream where he tasted her mouth and skin and blood and woke smelling salt, arms and veins both empty.

"It is a marvel, that her..." Wes searches for a term, "her spiritual avatar, I suppose, was powerful enough that she even tasted human to Spike. But then she always did amaze."

Angel grits his teeth. "I wish..." he stops.

"As do I," Wes murmurs. "She was saying her farewells, and I didn't even realise."

Angel wonders what Wes thinks they're wishing for--that they had realized the truth, that they had saved her from it, that Cordy were alive to amaze them still?

But Angel has simpler wishes. He wishes he could punch Spike until Cordy's blood poured out, distilled and pure, for Angel to lick off his skin. He wishes that he had moved his mouth from her lips to her neck, that he had bitten down and swallowed when he had the chance. While other memories fade, the memory of blood remains: Buffy's, strength overlaid with desperation; Kate's, textured with shock and terror; Connor's, powerful even in trace amounts; Wes's, freely given, so laced with bitterness that it made up for the lack of fear; Lilah's, still warm and satisfying even though he had not made the kill; Faith's, rich with strength and dreams. Angel never regrets blood taken but blood denied: Connor's blood washed off his hands in the sewers, every drop the shamans took from the knife he used to kill his son.

And now Cordy lies there, his oldest friend, his fellow warrior, his not-quite-lover. He has her clothes stacked in boxes at the Hyperion; he has photographs of her to place in the drawer where he keeps Doyle's videotape and Connor's knife. But neither of these will sustain him like the memory of Cordelia’s blood, full of determination and vibrancy, would have. And it is too late. Her blood is mingled with the pig's blood in Spike's veins, or cooling in her corpse.

Wes stands at his shoulder, and Angel is grateful. Because without Wes there, he would lean down and let his fangs pierce skin, even knowing that he can no longer taste Cordelia, but only death.

END

And thanks to JET for the title.