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Mar. 15th, 2005 05:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
doylePiece of crossover weirdness for ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
femslash05 (xposted). I can't remember who this is for, because I suck and my assignment was accidentally deleted. But it's for someone not on my flist who wanted Buffy, Angel or Sandman, no specified pairings or characters.
Title: Off the Board
Author: Doyle (doyle@exitseraphim.net)
Fandom: Sandman/Angel
Pairing: Lyta Hall/Cordelia Chase
Rating: R
Spoilers: The whole Sandman run, Angel through You’re Welcome.
Summary: “You were a pawn who briefly became a knight – or a queen. And you’ve just been taken off the board.”
Your shrink has a nicer office than the first and third doctors you went to, though not as roomy as the second or fifth, and the fourth therapist’s couch was so comfortable you used to go to sessions just to sleep. Ten minutes into the hour you realize that it’s the only difference. A south-facing office here, a potted fern there, a façade of originality to make their advice sound profound, but they might as well read from the same script: you’ve been under a lot of stress, Mrs. Hall. Of course you dream, Mrs. Hall, you just don’t remember when you wake up. Would you like to talk about your husband? Your son?
“I don’t want to talk about my son,” you say, like you’ve been saying since you woke up from the dream of a funeral and a kiss from a man in a white robe. You described the dream to your first doctor, and he said a lot of things about Jesus and father-figures and when you swept back your hair and showed him the kiss-shape on your forehead, the birthmark you weren’t born with, he looked at you so kindly you wanted him dead and he told you, “Lyta, there’s nothing on your skin.”
Hell, maybe you are crazy. The only reason you keep going to doctors is because work pays for it, work insists, and it lets you tell yourself that the people on the other side of the therapists’ desks are crazier than you.
**
The woman on the third floor is twenty-two years old – dark hair, beautiful face. Brown eyes, you guess, but it’s only a guess; Cordelia Chase has been in a coma for three months, and you never met her before she became your job. It’s easy work, well-paid, and you sometimes wonder why Wolfram & Hart employs you to babysit a sleeping woman. It makes a little more sense when you work out that her boyfriend’s the CEO. You’ve heard he has twelve sports cars and a private jet. Maybe a helicopter. He can afford to make sure his girlfriend’s not left alone in the dark.
If you look at her closely – you do that a lot, because you can only read for so long and there’s no TV in Cordelia’s private room – you can see her closed eyes flicker.
You know what that’s like, to live in dreams.
**
You’ve never told anyone that you miss the Dream Dome.
People at work know, even if they don’t know you, that you’ve got a dead husband (that gets you looks of sympathy and what they think is understanding) and a dead baby (and that makes people not want to meet your eyes, look down when you pass them, pretend not to see you because they might turn to stone). You could tell your friends, if you had friends, I miss Hector, I miss Daniel and they would hug you and pity you. And then you would want to kill them.
This is why you’re not much of a people person.
You’re closer to Cordelia than you’ve been to anyone since Daniel… disappeared. She’s your perfect relationship. You can tell her everything and she’ll never judge. Never talk back.
You don’t tell her, though, because you’re not sure how much people can hear in comas. You sit at her bedside and read her articles from Vogue, because the CEO boyfriend said she likes fashion. He’s only spoken to you that one time. Didn’t look at you, seemed barely aware you exist. For a moment you forgot your past and the mark of Cain on your forehead and you were just another underling.
When she moans in her sleep you hold her hand, talk to her through the nightmares; you remember Hector playing the superhero, battling the Sleepsnatcher and the Fell Beasts From Mars. He always won. You stayed in the Dream Dome and brushed your hair and waited for the baby that never came, and Hector spun you fairytales of storks and cabbage patches; God, Hector, so brave against the nightmares and so terrified of the real world, of blood and fucking and death and the truth about where babies come from.
Everything was so simple then.
You spent years in a dream, and now you sleep but you don’t dream at all. You rub the kiss on your forehead and watch Cordelia breathe, in, out, in, out.
**
“You know you’re keeping me asleep, right?”
It’s the park. It’s the middle of the day. Cordelia is on the bench next to you, awake and out of her gown. You can hear children laughing, but the park is empty; the merry-go-round spins by itself, creaking on each revolution.
You say, “I haven’t dreamed anything for so long, I forgot what it was like.”
You say, “I fell asleep? At work?”
“Finally,” she says. You thought she’d have a soft voice. You were right about the brown eyes. She strokes her swollen belly and a sick feeling seeps through you and no, it can’t be happening again.
“You can’t,” you say. “If you carry the baby in the dreamworld it belongs to him and he’s dead but he’s not really, he’s Daniel, and he kissed me and he never let me come back. We have to go, now.” You wrap your hand around hers and pull, but she doesn’t come.
“Relax. Baby’s long gone. Long gone,” she repeats softly, her free hand making circles on her stomach. “All grown up.”
There’s a man at the edge of the park, his robe stark white against the green of the trees. For a second you think there’s someone else, a woman with a smile that makes you believe that everything in the world is beautiful and good, and then they’re both gone.
“Listen,” Cordelia says. “Short version. That mark on your head? Protects you. From everything. The Senior Partners know the big dogs are on your side. If you run, they won’t touch you.”
You’re covered in red. Bleeding, you think, but when you look down it’s your old costume. Red and yellow. You must have looked like a jester. You’ve always hated spandex.
“Lyta.” Weird names. Hippolyta. Cordelia. She squeezes your hand and sounds very serious as she says, “They’re using you to keep me asleep. And I’ve got to wake up. I’ve got to talk to Angel. Okay?”
You say, “What happened to your baby?” and jerk awake before you hear the answer.
**
The next time you see Cordelia Chase – the last time you see her – you’re three thousand miles away from Wolfram & Hart, and she’s dead.
“Okay,” you say, stalling for time, because you’ve never had a dead girl in your kitchen before and you’re probably breaking all kinds of rules of etiquette. “How did you…”
“Astral projection,” she says. “It’s a thing. Anyway, how have you been?”
It’s a question you hate. Somehow, from her, you don’t mind. “I’m sleeping better. Actually dreaming. I’ve stopped seeing psychologists. Are you really dead?” Because she looks so alive, and when you touch her wrist to check you can feel warmth and a pulse.
“Gee, I hope so, they buried me.” And then she’s holding you because you suddenly can’t keep the tears back. “Lyta. Lyta? It’s okay.”
It’s not, it’s not, Hector and Daniel are gone and the Dream Dome isn’t there any more and it never existed at all; you barely knew Cordelia and you hurt her without meaning to, kept her asleep, and now she’s dead, and you can’t understand why anybody ever thought you were a superhero.
You and Hector never had sex the whole two years you were stuck in the dream. When you kiss Cordelia, when you pull her into the bedroom and undress her (the clothes are as insubstantial as she is pretending not to be, disappearing as they drop to the floor) when you slide your fingers inside her and make her come and leave a bite in the shape of your kiss across her neck, it makes it real.
**
You dream of three women (just one woman?) They are very familiar. One of them gives you an apple.
You dream of the skooky bird, carrying Jed on its back to the green-cheese moon.
You dream of Hector teaching Daniel to walk, and the man in white is there, and this time he stays long enough to nod with what you think is acceptance, or approval.
And you dream of Cordelia, and she’s ruling her high school, and she’s ruling a whole dimension, and she’s in love with XanderDoyleAngel (you know the names and you love them too) and she’s rising up towards a white light that’s more beautiful than anything you’ve ever seen.
And just as you’re about to follow her, you wake up.
femslash05 (xposted). I can't remember who this is for, because I suck and my assignment was accidentally deleted. But it's for someone not on my flist who wanted Buffy, Angel or Sandman, no specified pairings or characters.Title: Off the Board
Author: Doyle (doyle@exitseraphim.net)
Fandom: Sandman/Angel
Pairing: Lyta Hall/Cordelia Chase
Rating: R
Spoilers: The whole Sandman run, Angel through You’re Welcome.
Summary: “You were a pawn who briefly became a knight – or a queen. And you’ve just been taken off the board.”
Your shrink has a nicer office than the first and third doctors you went to, though not as roomy as the second or fifth, and the fourth therapist’s couch was so comfortable you used to go to sessions just to sleep. Ten minutes into the hour you realize that it’s the only difference. A south-facing office here, a potted fern there, a façade of originality to make their advice sound profound, but they might as well read from the same script: you’ve been under a lot of stress, Mrs. Hall. Of course you dream, Mrs. Hall, you just don’t remember when you wake up. Would you like to talk about your husband? Your son?
“I don’t want to talk about my son,” you say, like you’ve been saying since you woke up from the dream of a funeral and a kiss from a man in a white robe. You described the dream to your first doctor, and he said a lot of things about Jesus and father-figures and when you swept back your hair and showed him the kiss-shape on your forehead, the birthmark you weren’t born with, he looked at you so kindly you wanted him dead and he told you, “Lyta, there’s nothing on your skin.”
Hell, maybe you are crazy. The only reason you keep going to doctors is because work pays for it, work insists, and it lets you tell yourself that the people on the other side of the therapists’ desks are crazier than you.
**
The woman on the third floor is twenty-two years old – dark hair, beautiful face. Brown eyes, you guess, but it’s only a guess; Cordelia Chase has been in a coma for three months, and you never met her before she became your job. It’s easy work, well-paid, and you sometimes wonder why Wolfram & Hart employs you to babysit a sleeping woman. It makes a little more sense when you work out that her boyfriend’s the CEO. You’ve heard he has twelve sports cars and a private jet. Maybe a helicopter. He can afford to make sure his girlfriend’s not left alone in the dark.
If you look at her closely – you do that a lot, because you can only read for so long and there’s no TV in Cordelia’s private room – you can see her closed eyes flicker.
You know what that’s like, to live in dreams.
**
You’ve never told anyone that you miss the Dream Dome.
People at work know, even if they don’t know you, that you’ve got a dead husband (that gets you looks of sympathy and what they think is understanding) and a dead baby (and that makes people not want to meet your eyes, look down when you pass them, pretend not to see you because they might turn to stone). You could tell your friends, if you had friends, I miss Hector, I miss Daniel and they would hug you and pity you. And then you would want to kill them.
This is why you’re not much of a people person.
You’re closer to Cordelia than you’ve been to anyone since Daniel… disappeared. She’s your perfect relationship. You can tell her everything and she’ll never judge. Never talk back.
You don’t tell her, though, because you’re not sure how much people can hear in comas. You sit at her bedside and read her articles from Vogue, because the CEO boyfriend said she likes fashion. He’s only spoken to you that one time. Didn’t look at you, seemed barely aware you exist. For a moment you forgot your past and the mark of Cain on your forehead and you were just another underling.
When she moans in her sleep you hold her hand, talk to her through the nightmares; you remember Hector playing the superhero, battling the Sleepsnatcher and the Fell Beasts From Mars. He always won. You stayed in the Dream Dome and brushed your hair and waited for the baby that never came, and Hector spun you fairytales of storks and cabbage patches; God, Hector, so brave against the nightmares and so terrified of the real world, of blood and fucking and death and the truth about where babies come from.
Everything was so simple then.
You spent years in a dream, and now you sleep but you don’t dream at all. You rub the kiss on your forehead and watch Cordelia breathe, in, out, in, out.
**
“You know you’re keeping me asleep, right?”
It’s the park. It’s the middle of the day. Cordelia is on the bench next to you, awake and out of her gown. You can hear children laughing, but the park is empty; the merry-go-round spins by itself, creaking on each revolution.
You say, “I haven’t dreamed anything for so long, I forgot what it was like.”
You say, “I fell asleep? At work?”
“Finally,” she says. You thought she’d have a soft voice. You were right about the brown eyes. She strokes her swollen belly and a sick feeling seeps through you and no, it can’t be happening again.
“You can’t,” you say. “If you carry the baby in the dreamworld it belongs to him and he’s dead but he’s not really, he’s Daniel, and he kissed me and he never let me come back. We have to go, now.” You wrap your hand around hers and pull, but she doesn’t come.
“Relax. Baby’s long gone. Long gone,” she repeats softly, her free hand making circles on her stomach. “All grown up.”
There’s a man at the edge of the park, his robe stark white against the green of the trees. For a second you think there’s someone else, a woman with a smile that makes you believe that everything in the world is beautiful and good, and then they’re both gone.
“Listen,” Cordelia says. “Short version. That mark on your head? Protects you. From everything. The Senior Partners know the big dogs are on your side. If you run, they won’t touch you.”
You’re covered in red. Bleeding, you think, but when you look down it’s your old costume. Red and yellow. You must have looked like a jester. You’ve always hated spandex.
“Lyta.” Weird names. Hippolyta. Cordelia. She squeezes your hand and sounds very serious as she says, “They’re using you to keep me asleep. And I’ve got to wake up. I’ve got to talk to Angel. Okay?”
You say, “What happened to your baby?” and jerk awake before you hear the answer.
**
The next time you see Cordelia Chase – the last time you see her – you’re three thousand miles away from Wolfram & Hart, and she’s dead.
“Okay,” you say, stalling for time, because you’ve never had a dead girl in your kitchen before and you’re probably breaking all kinds of rules of etiquette. “How did you…”
“Astral projection,” she says. “It’s a thing. Anyway, how have you been?”
It’s a question you hate. Somehow, from her, you don’t mind. “I’m sleeping better. Actually dreaming. I’ve stopped seeing psychologists. Are you really dead?” Because she looks so alive, and when you touch her wrist to check you can feel warmth and a pulse.
“Gee, I hope so, they buried me.” And then she’s holding you because you suddenly can’t keep the tears back. “Lyta. Lyta? It’s okay.”
It’s not, it’s not, Hector and Daniel are gone and the Dream Dome isn’t there any more and it never existed at all; you barely knew Cordelia and you hurt her without meaning to, kept her asleep, and now she’s dead, and you can’t understand why anybody ever thought you were a superhero.
You and Hector never had sex the whole two years you were stuck in the dream. When you kiss Cordelia, when you pull her into the bedroom and undress her (the clothes are as insubstantial as she is pretending not to be, disappearing as they drop to the floor) when you slide your fingers inside her and make her come and leave a bite in the shape of your kiss across her neck, it makes it real.
**
You dream of three women (just one woman?) They are very familiar. One of them gives you an apple.
You dream of the skooky bird, carrying Jed on its back to the green-cheese moon.
You dream of Hector teaching Daniel to walk, and the man in white is there, and this time he stays long enough to nod with what you think is acceptance, or approval.
And you dream of Cordelia, and she’s ruling her high school, and she’s ruling a whole dimension, and she’s in love with XanderDoyleAngel (you know the names and you love them too) and she’s rising up towards a white light that’s more beautiful than anything you’ve ever seen.
And just as you’re about to follow her, you wake up.