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She was missing something, a detail, a fragment of thought of the tip of her tongue, a memory that felt like static rubbing against the fleshy parts of her brain that she shouldn’t be able to feel with such visceral understanding. She wasn’t where she was supposed to be, but she couldn’t remember anything before this or any reason to want to.
Something dark lingered on the edge of that static that said: you don’t want to know me and for what felt like the first time in her life, she listened.
She felt like maybe that was out of character, but couldn’t find the energy to care.
Lips pressed against her lips and in the bright lights other bodies moved and moved in unison to a song that beat against her skull driving out everything that wasn’t warm fingers and warm lips and butterflies in her chest like a long-held dream was finally coming true.
“Buffy, are you listening?” Olivia’s voice broke through Buffy’s concentration and she snapped to attention, as if she hadn’t been contemplating the way that Cordelia’s hair curled just under her exposed collarbone. It was like poetry. It was like something that Percy Shelley would have had a lot to say about, she would bet.
“Weird things in the woods. Gotta slay. I think I know the drill, Olivia,” she replied flippantly, wondering if there was any way to finish this assignment early enough - and without any demon goo ending up on her shoes - to get a slow dance in with her girlfriend at the Bronze.
Olivia took off his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose in that way he had of doing that meant she hadn’t heard a word he’d actually said and now was the time to either apologize or keep plugging forward.
When she was feeling generous and selfless, she went for the former but that was rare these days, so she jumped up and grabbed her crossbow off the table and winked at Cordelia (she blushed? damn she was so fucking cute it was unfair as shit.), “Time to slay, see you at the Bronze in an hour?”
She was out the swinging library doors before anyone could protest.
Dancing here was something completely different than anything else she’d ever experienced. Not that she could remember things from outside or before, there was no beginning or ending to this place, this sway, this rhythm; but she also knew instinctively that elsewhere, this wasn’t how the world felt or moved.
Which was totally okay with her, really.
Something instinctively told her that the lips on her skin were just a memory, that the fingers tangled up in her hair were just a dream of a thing that she imagined once, she was cresting on a wave of her own imagination, surrounded by a girl that may or may not exist.
Totally exists.
Reality may be twisty and that was probably supposed to be terrifying, but if there was one thing that was true, it was that the beat of her heart and the person tugging at her to remember was more real than anything else ever was or could be.
It wasn’t enough to fight the dance, not at first.
But amidst the haze and static and restless beat of otherworldly music came the thought, the knowledge, the heart-breaking truth: she deserved to be in the place where those lips were real and not a memory and she had been there before.
“I can go,” Cordelia said stubbornly, fighting the urge to stamp her foot the way she used to when her parents tried to deny her something she knew she deserved.
The gang looked at her the way they always looked at her - like she hadn’t been fighting beside them for the past two years, like she didn’t walk the halls with Buffy’s hand in hers and fuck if that wasn’t the bravest shit she’d ever done in her life, like she didn’t clean wounds daily and sit in the trenches with them, like she wasn’t just as much a part of this war as they were.
More.
There was more on the line for her than for them, though she’d never say that out loud and they’d all hate her even more for saying it. They thought loving the Slayer for her was a party trick, something to piss off her Republican parents and tease the football team with, something that she’d dismiss years later as a phase. They thought their love was more pure; they didn't realize her heart was on the line every time Buffy walked into danger - they'd survive anything but she was no longer sure she would if Buffy didn't.
Not that she’d admit that to them.
“I’m going,” Faith smiled in her feline way that made Cordelia feel younger and desperate than she ever had in her life.
“This seems like a Slayer thing,” Willow said worriedly, a crease appearing over her nose. “Maybe we should leave this to the professionals?”
Ms. Calendar caught Cordelia’s gaze, but as always she couldn’t read the expression there. Sometimes it felt like Ms. Calendar understood something about Cordelia and Buffy’s relationship that no one else did. Something beyond the way she looked at Olivia the same way Cordelia found herself looking at Buffy, that exasperated goddamnit why do I love you so much you are so ridiculous expression.
“It’s magick right,” Amy said lowly from the corner, “I think we need something a bit more sophisticated than a hack and slash.”
Buffy had been gone for forty-eight hours.
Cordelia had started worrying when she didn’t show up at the Bronze on time. It was only in the middle of the second day that the troops started coming up with a plan. Then had commenced several hours of arguing in-between classes.
It was the last week of the semester, the sun shining outside tore at Cordelia’s heart - she and Buffy should be shoulder-to-shoulder in the quad planning their summer road trip together, she and Buffy should be in the back of the science lab giggling during the let’s waste time because everyone’s already taken their exams movies about the ice age, she and Buffy… she and Buffy…she and Buffy…. s h e a n d B u f f y……
Faith started talking quietly to Olivia while Amy and Willow argued over the philosophical points of research on faery rings and the limited amount of research available and Oz started dialing their go-to pizza place. In the blur of voices, Cordelia and Ms. Calendar slipped away.
Fairy tales had it all wrong, something buzzed in her brain.
There was nothing beautiful about this manic dancing without end.
Slowly she became aware of her body again, her swollen and sore muscles, her bleeding feet, her parched lips and throat, her burning eyes.
How long had she been dancing dancing dancing without end?
What was her name what was her home what was her purpose was there anything but moving moving moving and the beating beating beating of this awful music?
Chattering otherworldly voices in her ear pulled her back, waves of bliss and waves of pain became the only way of keeping track of the time, and in between all of this a yearning for someone lost.
“Are you sure about this?”
Cordelia peered into the green-glowing woods and back at Ms. Calendar, “Am I sure I’m doing this or sure I’m going to succeed?”
She shrugged, “Either one.”
“Yes and no,” Cordelia sighed. “But I’m tired of them treating me like the only thing I can do is be the damsel in distress. It’s my fucking girlfriend trapped in a faery ring in the middle of the woods slowly dying, not the Slayer.”
Ms. Calendar slipped a charm on a rope around Cordelia’s neck, “I’ll stay close and this will tether you to me, but if you can’t pull her out….”
“Don’t even Ms. Calendar,” Cordelia hissed. “I’m not leaving Buffy in there.”
“Please, Miss Chase,” she laughed, “In the classroom I’m Ms. Calendar, but when we’re using ancient Romani magick against a group of fae in order to save your girlfriend - completely on our own without backup and against my girlfriend’s direct wishes - please call me Jenny.”
Hands.
Hands everywhere.
Some of them belonged to the chattering laughing voices that rang in her ears, their touch scalded her in an intangible way she would never be able to explain.
Her own hands reaching reaching reaching.
They shouldn’t be helpless, her hands, they should be strong and powerful. It was the strangest truth of this place, this space, this unending moment - that she was seeking and grasping when it felt as though her hands were so much more used to smashing.
And then in the brightness and in the dancing, hands that held a memory wrapped around her waist, stilled her. Lips against her ear and they felt like skin and life and blood and flesh and not memory and dream.
A voice that broke against the chattering and music like a balm.
Time to wake up, Sleeping Beauty.
Lips against her lips, not a dream not a grasping gasping memory, but warm and pliable and there and just for her.
Lips against lips.
Just like in all the fairy tales.
Cordelia half-carried, half-dragged Buffy out of the woods and found Jenny having a conversation with something that looked like a living shadow floating in the air. Within a moment, the glowing green light in the woods disappeared and then they were back in the car, Buffy shivering in Cordelia’s lap in the backseat and all three of them changed possibly forever… but also exactly who they always knew they were before that moment.
There was pizza in the library and a bemused Olivia and a frustrated Faith and a smug Amy and a relieved Willow and a silent Oz. Which felt normal.
And the next weekend, Cordelia and Buffy set off on their roadtrip with new matching bracelets from Jenny around their wrists.
Buffy laughed at hers and kissed Jenny on the cheek before showing off her Princess bracelet proudly.
Cordelia stroked hers silently, something heavy tugging at her heart, something like pride or a sudden understanding. Jenny pulled her into a hug and whispered the title in her ear like a magick charm - and maybe it was - you could never tell with her.
Sometimes what you want to be and what you are willing to become for love are different than you thought and sometimes the fairy tales are more correct than you thought as a kid - because for every princess there is a prince charming.