The Snow Queen, Part 2

[doyle]

It was quiet for a long time.

The place where she was trapped was small, and dark, and cold. Cordelia couldn’t see anything, not even her own body, and her hands and feet were too numb to feel, but she huddled in on herself as best she could.

Just every so often, she saw glimpses. Like the visions, but she only caught fragments, like light hitting facets of a diamond.

Stepping over bodies in a candlelit room, her bare feet tracking blood over the cold floor.

A hallway that bloomed with stalactites where she passed. She paused there, admiring the perfection of the ice.

At the top of the stairs, a great hallway. Less people there than she’d expected, than she’d been promised, but they’d do. And there was water, a pool that froze beneath her as she stepped onto its surface.

“Where is my tribute?” Kalthena said with Cordelia’s voice.

**

I can’t die, Cordelia thought, holding on to that thought with everything she had left. If I die, Gunn will kill me.

She couldn’t die anyway, probably. This wasn’t her. This thing that she thought was her body was just some demon mental trick. Her body was being worn like a cheap pantsuit by a frigid bitch of a goddess. Her body was about to slaughter a bunch of people and end the world.

Another flash, like seeing a room lit up by a lightning flash – a pretty young woman on her knees, neck bared, and Cordelia’s hand on her throat.

Kalthena was in control, and all she cared about was the power she sensed off this girl. She wouldn’t notice anything as base and human as the clothes her dinner was wearing. But Cordelia could see, even if she couldn’t do anything, and she realized with a jolt what it had to mean that this girl wasn’t dressed in formalwear.

The warehouse doors were open. Kalthena smiled, feeling the ocean outside, the vast power there.

“Hey!” Cordelia screamed into the darkness. If she focussed just right she could feel her body, her real body. Not enough to get back behind the wheel, but enough of a sense of position to feel Kalthena pause and drop the girl.

“You’re still conscious.” The voice was different. Still that mixture of whisper and cacophony, but now it was Cordelia’s voice, with a whiny edge that made her think of her mom. “Why are you still conscious?”

Inside her mind, Cordelia stood up. “Come back in here and find out.”

**

Deep down inside her body she could feel her heartbeat, if she paid attention. It pounded twice between her issue of the challenge and Kalthena appearing before her. Two seconds, then, maybe less. It felt like years.

The void around her lightened and shifted, flowing past and through her like liquid diamonds, and when it stopped she was in a chamber that stretched above her for miles. She turned, and a million other Cordelias turned with her, reflected in the huge panels of ice that lined the walls.

And in front of her, Kalthena, wearing Cordelia’s face and Cordelia’s body and a smug smile that said she’d already won, and would Cordy like to grovel now or be crushed like an insect first?

“A crown?” Cordelia said, eyebrows high in disbelief. “And the outfit - first of all, fur is so not this century, though with the sacrificing thing maybe you’d enjoy getting blood tossed over you, and second, where do you shop, Cliched Skanky Demons R Us?”

Kalthena wasn’t smiling any more. “I have your body, mortal. When I take my tribute I will be reborn into your world, and I will be all-powerful.”

She folded her arms across her chest. “And then we’ll all tremble before you, yadda yadda pain-and-terror. Maybe that worked for the middle ages crowd but, lady, I went to Sunnydale High.” She could’ve sworn that some of the ice around her was beginning to melt, but she couldn’t chance a look. Instead she advanced on Kalthena with slow, deliberate steps, and mentally cheered when the ‘goddess’ actually stepped back. “That crown? Doesn’t make you a queen. The morons following you? Don’t make you a goddess. And the fact that you’re wearing my body?” She smiled. In the ice mirrors, thousands and thousands of her smiled. “Does not. Make. You. Me.”

Every bit of force she could will into her pseudo-self went into the swing of her arm, and the backhand she dealt to Kalthena’s face knocked the demon to the ground.

Kalthena screamed. The chamber shook with it, shards of ice cascading down around them both. Cordelia stood her ground.

“Out there you may be the big, scary snow-demon,” she said. “But this is my head. I’m in charge.”

Kalthena snarled up at her, face livid where Cordelia had slapped her. Steam was rising from the scarlet mark, curling and hissing into the air. She clambered to her feet, crown and flashy robes gone, and she didn’t look so much like Cordelia, now. She looked older. Primitive, and dangerous, and as hard as if she was made out of ice.

“You can’t beat me!” she howled, a freezing wind rising up around them both.

“No, you idiot,” Cordelia said as she felt her body pulling her back in. “But I can keep you distracted long enough for my friends to do the binding spell.”

In the back of her mind Kalthena screamed for a long time, sounding like the roaring of the wind, and then she was only a whisper, and then nothing at all.

**

Cordelia wasn’t aware of having fainted until she woke up. She came around slowly, feeling nothing at first except the ice on her forehead, and she groaned.

“I’m sorry,” a woman’s voice said, “did I hurt you?”

She opened her eyes, then squeezed them shut again. Hello to the too much brightness. She was never going to complain about vision pain again.

When she risked another look, a blonde girl was hovering anxiously by her side. She’d seen her before, except she hadn’t been herself, and she’d been more interested in the scrummy blood. “Sorry I tried to eat you,” she croaked.

Puzzled frown, then a sweet smile and a duck of her head. “Oh. Oh, that’s okay. I’m Tara.” She said something beneath her breath, passing a hand over Cordelia’s forehead, and whatever it was, it made the pain fade away.

“Thanks,” she said, frowning as she took stock of where she was. She looked around her in surprise, convinced she was hallucinating – or, worse, still stuck inside her brain.

She was on a bed that had been new some time when Kalthena was last trying to take form, fifty years ago. She’d mentioned the grossness of these beds to Angel but he said he didn’t care, it wasn’t like anybody slept in the hotel but him…

“When did we get back?” she said, pushing herself up so she was sitting. “Where is everybody? Are Wes and Angel okay? What about Gunn?”

“Maybe I should get Angel,” Tara said.

“I got it,” Gunn said from the doorway, and Cordelia was sure her face was lit with a loopy grin. “Hey, sleeping beauty. You slept all the way back here. Thought I was gonna have to toss ice water over you.”

She sank back against the pillows. “You’re okay.”

“Same as always. Your guys are fine. Coupla scratches from the fight, but getting fixed downstairs. Freaky-ass religious guys had them spelled not to move.”

“How’d you break them out?”

He grinned. “Grabbed the nearest thing in robes, stuck that spoon-fork in parts he didn’t want it stuck till he un-magiced the magic.”

That was a mental picture she was going to enjoy revisiting. “But everybody’s okay?”

Tara said, “Once Giles and Willow did the binding spell, the rest of Kalthena’s followers scattered.”

Cordelia almost asked why Tara hadn’t done the spell too – Giles had said she was a witch, hadn’t he? – then she remembered how close Kalthena had come to making her into appetizers. At least she didn’t seem the type to hold grudges.

“We killed all the demons we could in the basement,” Gunn said, coming into the room and taking a seat at the foot of the bed. “Way I hear it, Tara’s gang were kicking it topside.”

“Oh, they’re not my gang,” she said, turning pink.

“What about the humans?” Cordelia asked. She caught the look that went between Gunn and Tara. “Oh,” she said hollowly.

“We found a bunch of dead guys in robes in one of the rooms in the basement,” Gunn said.

She bet they did. All they would’ve had to do was follow the bloody footprints.

“Could’ve been more of them at the party, but,” he shrugged, “looks like they double-crossed Wolfram & Hart. Not our problem what happens to them next. Your friend with the stupid name’s all right. Guy with the hand got the doors open, said there was a fire or something. Time Kalthena took you over, most everybody’d got out.”

“She – the demon – she didn’t kill the girls, though,” Tara said. “We reversed the spell that was holding them. Willow’s checking them out now. I mean,” she added, seeming for some reason to regret her phrasing, “Willow and Wesley are making sure they’re not hurt. They’ll take them home, or to the hospital.”

“They were backups,” Cordelia said. “When she was in my brain, I saw – things. Felt what she was thinking. My body would’ve burnt up once she took the tribute.” She didn’t mention the other things she’d seen; centuries of the annual sacrifices in her name, and a thousand years frozen in the darkness when her people had found other gods. “Is she gone?” was all she said.

“Spell should be permanent this time,” Gunn said, before Tara could answer. He shrugged. “Got to talking to Giles on the ride back. Okay guy.”

The door opened again. Her sickbed was turning into grand central, Cordy thought.

“Hey, you’re awake,” Buffy said.

“And it’s those keen powers of observation that make you a great Slayer,” Cordelia said, no real bitchiness behind it. “Hi. Like the hair.”

“Thanks.” She didn’t sit on the bed. Cordelia was relieved. Between herself and Gunn and Tara it was starting to look like the world’s wackiest orgy. “I just came up to check on you. So, are you okay?”

“Yes, Buffy, you can hide in here,” Cordelia said.

She sighed, taking a seat on the room’s only chair. “Thank God. Angel and Riley won’t stop glaring at each other. Oh, Xander really wanted to come with, but there was no room in Giles’s midlife-crisismobile.”

“’Specially not for two of him. Anya called,” she said, off Buffy’s quizzical look.

“Yeah, that was a fun and zany day on the Hellmouth.”

“You can have my job,” she said. “I’ll trade.”

“Hey,” Gunn said, and actually prodded her ankle, “what happened to saving my life? You’re gonna go off and be the Slayer, don’t see how you can be pulling my ass out of the fire at the same time.”

“I don’t want to be the Slayer,” she decided, snuggling down into the covers. “I’d look terrible as a blonde. Or a psycho.”

Gunn must have looked to Buffy for an explanation of the ‘psycho’ comment, because she said, “long, long story with jails and stabbing”. Cordelia kept her eyes closed, tempted to go back to sleep.

The weight on the bed shifted. Tara had stood up. “We’ll tell Angel and Mr. Pryce you’re awake,” she said.

“Tell ‘em she’s asleep,” Gunn said. “She can see them later.”

“Don’t let Cordelia speak for herself,” she murmured. “Caveman. I was a goddess, buddy.”

Then Tara said, “It was really nice meeting you,” and Buffy sighed and said, “Guess I have to face the testosterone poisoning some time,” and then the room was nicely quiet.

Gunn’s hand was still a comforting weight on her ankle. “Angel wants to know why we got a college kid tied up downstairs. Think he thought we were bringing him home takeout now.”

“Not that tonight wasn’t fun,” she said, “but next time a demon needs to impregnate or bodysnatch somebody, can it be Wesley? I’m just saying, we could take turns, have a rota, so it’s not always me getting my body hijacked by the evil people-eating goddess who wants to destroy the world.” Okay, she admitted, like that could happen twice, rerun hell or not, but still. She wanted it in writing.

He laughed. “I dunno. I saw you when that Goddess of Eternal Whatever was controlling you. Don’t think Wesley’d look that good.”

She opened one eye. “I looked good?”

“Looked fine to me.”

“With the frostbite and the blue lips and the ruined dress that David had to pay for and I can’t even return.”

“Tellin’ you.”

“Thanks.”

“Welcome.”

She fingered the faded pattern on the comforter. “Gunn?” she asked. “Did we save the world?”

“World’s still here, right? Stopped the demon, rescued the girls, found your missing folks. Call that a good night.”

“A good night that I slept through,” she pointed out. “Buffy, you guys – you did all the work.”

“So what?” he said, “Long as it gets done. And anyway, you kidding? You squished a goddess with just your brain, girl. I promise, I am never getting you mad.”

When he put it like that… She had, hadn’t she? “So, barring visions and probable Buffy-shaped catastrophes, Angel owes me a day off,” she said, cheering up. “Ooh, with pay. How’s the weather?”

He crossed over to the window. “Snow stopped right about the time you passed out.”

“But it’s still there, right? It didn’t go poof?”

“Still there. Must be three feet deep. Never seen a thing like it.” He’d gotten rid of the tuxedo’s jacket but was still in the dress shirt, sleeves rolled to his elbows. It looked good on him.

She remembered his face that afternoon, his expression when he saw snow for the first time, and she thought about his little sister, who’d never gotten to see it at all. “What are you doing tomorrow?” She corrected herself. “Today.”

He turned, and it looked like he made a really hard try at not grinning. “What did I say about the plan face?”

She pictured his face with a king-sized snowball in the middle of it. “You told me you thought it was gorgeous,” she yawned, eyes closing of their own accord this time.

And right before she fell asleep, she thought she heard him agree with her.

END

Comments

[mistress-mab.livejournal.com]

Saw this rec'd at BBF.

Wow. Seriously, seriously, wow. Your characterization was spot on, the plot was original, and the subtext simply rocked. This is how Cordy should be written.

*applause*