Life Is But A Dream by Starlet2367
Summary: Life is the dream. Death is the awakening.
Spoilers: Billy, Season Three.
Notes: Thanks to Psychofilly for the inspiration and the kind and generous beta. This story's for DamnSkippyToo. She knows why.
Cordelia
took the loaf of bread from the vendor, an old Latina woman with a black lace
shawl draped over her head. "Thanks," Cordy said, as she pocketed her
change.
She'd had a vision,
seen the big bad, and done the usual blah blah blah. Now they were
here on Cesar Chavez Avenue looking for Mr. Spiney. Around her the
crowd partied like it was 1999, but it was only the Day of the
Dead celebration, swinging from day to night, from loud to louder.
Firecrackers exploded
like gunfire in the fast-encroaching darkness. A brass band marched
by, cymbals crashing. Someone's long, thin wail broke into delirious
laughter.
In the middle of all
the insanity, Fred reached over, tugged one of the bone-shaped pieces
off the pan de muerto and ate it. She looked like a hungry skeleton
with her long, skinny body and face painted black and white.
"If we get our
faces done," she'd said, "we'll blend in better." Then she'd plopped herself
down in front of the make-up artist so he could do her face up in a
mask of death. And like two dogs with one bone, Gunn and Wes
practically fought to get into the chair next.
Cordy rolled her eyes,
watching as Gunn's face turned white and his eyes became sunken
sockets. "If they spent half that much energy looking for the demon
it'd be bagged and tagged by now."
She sighed as she
chewed a bite of the fragrant, sweet loaf. They were surrounded by
death—hell, Angel was as dead as you could get without being put in
the ground. But she still didn't get the whole celebration thing.
"C'mon,
Angel," Fred said. "You gotta get painted too. You're the most recognizable of
any of us."
"Yeah, man,"
Gunn said. "Wes and I did it. You don't get out of it."
Angel protested, but
he let Fred drag him to the chair where the artist waited,
smiling.
Cordy stood a few feet
away, watching as the procession marched down the cobblestones and
past the historic monument. The band turned the corner and the sound
became tinny, disjointed. In the middle of the street a row of men
walked shoulder to shoulder, their enormous death's head masks
glowing greenish-white in the light emitted by the street lamps.
She scanned deeper
into the crowd, looking for the thing from her vision. It was
human-shaped and average sized; in fact, the only things that
distinguished it from human were its day-glo green eyes and a row of spikes on
the back of its hands.
Deadly spikes that
snuck under your skin and filled you with stinging pain, like a thousand
yellow jackets.
Cordy shuddered, skin
prickling as she remembered the vision. Even as she shook it off, the
crowd lining the sidewalk expanded, forcing her out of her prime
viewing spot. She stood on tiptoe just to get a glimpse of the next
display, which turned out to be a group of women carrying banners.
Despite Cordy's
impaired vantage point, the old lady in the center of the parading group
caught her eye--or rather, her banner did. It was such a saturated red
that even the off-kilter light couldn't dim it. It looked like the
softest wool and its border of hearts and flowers cupped five bony
skeletons like a loving hand.
Then the woman, draped
in a shawl of black and gray striped wool, began to sing. Her
voice warbled, off-key yet compelling.
Suddenly several
teenage boys ran into the middle of the street. The woman kept walking,
singing...until something exploded a few feet from her. Cordy's
heart shot up in her throat and the boys laughed as the little knot of
women in the parade zone unraveled.
"Fireworks,"
she realized. But it wasn't soon enough to stop the instinctive surge of
the crowd. They reared back like a man at gunpoint and when they
moved, Cordy was dragged down the sidewalk with them.
A familiar, cool hand
gripped her arm and pulled her back. She breathed out a sigh,
turned, and smiled. "Thanks, Angel," she said.
But it wasn't Angel.
It was a man in a death mask.
Through the
papier-mache, she could see his eyes, glowing green. She blinked, thinking it
was a trick of the light.
Then it hit her.
She didn't move
quickly enough to avoid the prick on the back of her hand. When she looked
down, he was retracting the spikes at his wrist.
Cordy jolted like
she'd been hit with an electrical charge. Her hand stung--not a thousand
yellow jackets, she thought, just one really big one.
She turned to scream
for Angel but her throat had gone tight and she couldn't get the words
out. Then the undertow caught her and dragged her back down the
sidewalk.
No matter how hard she
tried Angel only moved farther away.
She blinked once,
twice, trying to steady herself. Then she started pushing through the
crowd, thinking, I have to get back to Angel.
But she was swimming
upstream. With every step, her heart clenched in her chest and she
hadn't even made it ten feet when her arm went numb to the shoulder.
***
What if life is the
dream, a voice in her head asks, and death the awakening?
That can't be right,
she thinks. Death is the illusion. Life is real. Just ask Angel. He
knows better than anyone does what it means to be alive.
See how he lets them
paint his face, how he laughs at the way the make-up tickles as it
goes on? See the light in his kohl-dark eyes, his big dark eyes, so
black against his pale skin?
White on black on
white….
She steadies herself
with one hand on someone's shoulder and waits for the spinning to stop.
When she blinks again,
Angel is a living skull, a walking skeleton. She cringes, realizing
that no matter how alive Angel seems, she's looking at his true
face.
She's looking at
death.
The whiz-kebang of
bottle rockets startles her and the harsh clatter of cymbals rattles her
bones. She doesn't bother to resist; it takes to much energy. So
when the drums boom again she lets them echo in her heart and dissolve
her into sound.
Now when she closes
her eyes the lights look like red firecrackers, sparking and spinning.
She laughs with the boys, laughs at the way the old women dance to
the beat of the little paper-and-flame bombs.
Someone takes her hand
and she drops the bread and spins along with them. Warm bodies,
sharp elbows, soft bellies, the scent of sweat when someone leans in
close.
She follows, buoyed by
the upsurge, carried with the tide.
Flashes of color, of
incandescence. Street lamps, the masks so tall and grinning,
streamers flying. She follows, borne away on scent and sound, part of the
living beast of the crowd until finally, after stepping, spinning,
gurgling, she is burped out onto a street corner.
Here the crowd is
less, the press of flesh gone. Ahead a door beckons, the entry
quiet, dark. She is led toward it, something pulling her ….
What is that sound?
As she crosses the
threshold the building takes on the form of a church. White stucco
and square windows, like it's rising from the desert. And inside
people are singing in hushed voices, chanting, talking to the dead.
She recognizes that
part of the conversation so she follows it like crumbs from the pan de
muerto until she is standing deep in the building, following a
ritual of prayer and song that is unknown but still somehow
familiar.
A woman stands, draped
with a black and gray shawl and even though she can't see her
face, Cordelia knows it's the same woman who carried the blood-red
banner.
Only now she knows the
woman's secret, how such an ugly voice commands her to
listen.
She can see the music
pouring out of the old woman's skull like cloud of golden smoke,
gathering above her until it engulfs the mass below.
Cordelia closes her
eyes, letting the smoke-light wash through her and over her. When she
opens them, the woman's mouth is gaping wider and wider until it
becomes a black maw.
Until Cordelia can
walk right in and never, ever come back out.
She sways and someone
next to her props her up. When she turns, she sees a skeleton, and
another, and another, faces masked by death.
Her hand rises and she
feels her own face, the exposed bones and teeth, the sharp jut
of the ridge where her nose might once have been.
And she smiles.
Ah, death. The voice
was right.
Life was the dream.
She feels herself
sinking, sinking into the stone of the floor, into the music and the
darkness. Incense becomes her companion, and the crackling-fire voice,
and then only the cool, sweet darkness.
The woman sings her
name, "Cordelia."
She nods, yes, I am
Cordelia.
The old woman holds
out her hand, small and square and roughened by work.
Cordelia lets herself
be pulled up and out, toward the light emanating from the top of the old woman's head.
It's warm and golden, like the dome of a church. She sighs happily.
Life was the dream.
*This* is life.
"Cordelia!"
The man's voice
startles her and she shoos it away with a flap of her hand.
"Cordelia!"
She turns and sees
Angel, all in black, the mask of his face enlivened by fear.
"Go `way. I'm
busy," she says.
The old woman is
calling, smiling, singing. The light is so beautiful.
Angel says,
"Don't go."
But it's so easy, so
easy to just let go and float....
"Please, Cordy. I
need you."
Cordelia feels a tug
on her heart then thumps back down into her body, like she's
jerking awake from a fitful sleep.
She opens her eyes.
Above her, Angel's face—she'd recognize it anywhere—even with
the skeleton make-up. "You look silly."
His entire body eases
toward her, minutely, but she can feel it. He's drawn to her the way
she was to the church, pulled in by her light and sound.
In her chest, her
heart races like a butterfly flying toward the light.
"I have
her!" he calls.
And then the throb of
her heart separates from her and becomes the thud of footsteps. Wes
and Gunn and Fred run and fall next to her, faces pressing in
close, a church choir of skeletons.
Hands lift her and
Angel's strong arms wrap her close.
Fred's voice, sharp
like the spikes on the demon's hands says, "Did he hurt her?"
"There's no
blood. That's a good sign." That's Angel. He's always so certain about blood.
"How long's she
been out?" Gunn's voice quivers.
She instinctively
reaches out and touches his hand. "Don't be afraid," she
says. "Life's the dream. Death is the awakening."
He gives her a strange
look and she finds herself laughing.
Then coughing.
Then gasping.
The processional stops
and silence expands.
Above her a skeleton's
face. Angel's face.
Or is it the woman's?
The black make-up dissolves into the black and gray shawl.
Voices flicker.
"Demon—"
someone says.
"—kill
it?" another chorister chimes.
"—must have
gotten loose in the crowd and—"
"—antidote?
Cordelia? Is she--?"
Voices fade. With a
trembling hand she reaches out and touches the small, square,
work-roughened fingers. The woman smiles, mouth becoming light and
expanding into a dome that covers them all.
"Come," she
sings.
Cordelia follows.
***
"Hey."
Angel looked up from
his book and smiled—a small, soft quirk of his lips. "Hey,
back." He leaned over and fluffed her pillows gently, then handed her a
glass and helped her drink. "You feeling better?"
She coughed and pulled
the glass away. Images flared like a lit match then died into
darkness. A church. A voice. Light. "We have to stop meeting like
this."
He laughed.
"Remind me next time, to kill the demon *before* the party." He
settled back into the chair, which he'd angled carefully next to the bed.
A smudge of make-up
was smeared under his jaw and she reached out and wiped it off with her
thumb.
"Thanks," he
said, and he picked up a towel, already stained with the remnants of his death
mask, and scrubbed under his chin until the rest of the white was
gone.
"What
happened?" She took another careful sip of water, trying not to spill it down the
front of her shirt. Her hands trembled, though, and Angel had to take the
glass and set it on the bedside table.
"Your Mr. Spiney
hit you with a spike as he worked his way through the crowd."
Oh. Right. "Then
what?"
"You got caught
in the procession. By the time we figured out what happened, killed the
demon, and got you the antidote-- Well, let's just say, I was really close to burying two women
I…care about this year."
She smiled.
"Well, Buffy came back." An image flashed again. That warm light, the
beautiful voice that she had followed— "And so did I."
He shook his head.
"Let's not talk about it." Instead, he hiked a hip on the bed and put his
hand on her forehead, like he was checking for fever. "You
hungry?"
She shook her head and
sat up slowly until they were shoulder to shoulder.
Angel slipped an arm
around her waist and braced her against him. "First the killer visions. Now this.
Maybe I should just get Dennis to lock you up at home so I won't have to
worry."
She snorted, then took
a long, deep breath and relaxed. He smelled so good, felt so real and
all she wanted to do was crawl into that soft spot where neck met
shoulder and dissolve. "This," she said, and her lips brushed his
flesh. "Life. Is it the dream?"
He stroked her hair
from crown to ends and lingered at the back of her neck. His fingers
tangled in her hair, tickled her nape. "This feels real. I hope
it's real."
Breath fanned against
her temple. His lips pressed there, light against her skin.
She curled deeper into
the arched dome of his body.
"Sleep," he
said. "I've got you."
And as she slipped
into sleep somewhere, far off, she heard a woman's voice sigh her name.
End.
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