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"No. I just want to know if you're going to keep asking questions. It helps me to decide what to tell you next. Anyway--she could have refused me. I think. In theory, anyway."

And now he leaned on the altar too, propping one foot up, looking off at the walls a little distantly, a little wistfully.

"But I don't think she ever considered that at all. It wasn't even possible, so far as she was concerned. Things were set and settled in her mind. Oh well. It was what it was. And it was a very long courtship on my part, I know that much. One might almost think of it as an arranged marriage. It's a shame it didn't work out."

More of a shame that his son was never born--though some would say that was a mercy, divine mercy.

He turned his gaze back to her.

"Now. If you do manage to escape, you've a new story to tell your suitor. He won't know that one. And I suspect he'll be curious about it."

"He's curious about most things, but I think stories relating to his archnemesis probably take the freaking cake, yeah."

Truth be told, she didn't know how much more she was asking.

Stalling tactic, yes, but also simple curiosity.

"Did you love her? Can you love?"

"When we first met in the desert, I told her 'how I love to love Nadine.' She was perfect and she was mine."

And he smiled gently.

"There was another woman whom I loved. Or...at least coveted."

Okay. Okay, no way to know if he was BSing but if he was telling the truth, that was good.

If he loved, then he was capable of good, she thought. It wasn't much to hope for, but it was better than resigning herself to death.

Slowly, she began to work her way around the altar, one hand still dragging across it's surface.

"Who was the second?"

He watched her, the gesture, the show, her movements reminiscent of any number of thousands of women in life and on screens trailing along bars and piano tops. The same gesture, the same intentions.

"Gabrielle. More properly, the Lady Gabrielle. Have you heard of her? Like as not you have, but I wonder if you know her name."

She nodded, briefly, as she contined making her way past him, walking backwards toward the door, hand behind her back.

"The mother."

Roland's mother, maybe. Or Alain's. She wouldn't ever admit it to Bert, of course, but she did sometimes zone out during those stories about the good old days or whatever they had been.

"Clever girl. So you do know."

Now where was she trying to go--back towards the door like that, sauntering along, something secreted in one hand perhaps? Was she really and truly trying to slip away so openly? Never.

He took a step towards her.

She backed up, quicker now, reaching for the handle. A distraction. Quick. Come on, Cordy, think.

Breasts? Sudden screaming of profanities? A look behind you!

"Did she fall to her death too?"

"No," he said patiently, watching her as she edged towards the door. "She was shot. Murdered by her own son while he was in a fit of rage and confusion. A sorrowful end for all of them, and me included."

He took another step forward.

"I still keep up with the matricide, though. Her son, I mean."

And he smiled.

"Well, who doesn't love some good old fashioned matricide?" she rambled, walking backwards on and on.

"Electra, Lizzie Borden, that girl Carrie with all the pig's blood and the prom from hell..."

And, then, she was there. She would only have a second but she turned, fast as she could, one hand pounding on the door and one testing the knob. Sure enough, locked, but she could still make some noise.

"Help!" Cordy screamed. "Help, someone, I'm trapped, get me out!"

He would've laughed about Carrie-with-all-the-pig's-blood-and-the-prom-from-hell. He really would have. The Breakers liked that one (and the attendant remakes, naturally). They liked Star Wars too, for that matter. So there was no telling with that lot.

And he really would've laughed. He would have.

Except that she had started screaming and carrying on.

Now he closed the distance between them--it was only a stride or two. And now he was all but on top of her, gripping her shoulders, holding her (crushing her?) as much against himself as against the door itself. And now he leaned down to her ear and whispered, hissing and harsh:

"Do you think that I'd put you in a room on a hallway that anyone would use? Do you think for even one moment that I would keep you anywhere near the rest of them? Where, precisely, do you think you are in this place, this temple, this palace of infinite rooms?"

"I think," she spat--and no standing still right now, not with her sudden rush of adrenaline, so she was kicking and elbowing and scratching at whatever she could manage, all while wriggling and writhing and trying to snake her way free--"That anyone could walk by, no matter where this is. And if you're going to threaten me and kidnap me and expect me not to try, then you're not just cocky. You're genuinely stupid."

Maybe she was cocky too, because she didn't doubt for a second she'd get out, one way or another, eventually. The PTB hadn't guided her through life to have her die in this dank little room.

Of course, then, the question was how much damage would be done to her by the time that escape happened.

"And you think I don't have other means by which to make sure you're not heard or found or looked for. No." He kept his voice calm and level and even, more a lecture than a scolding.

"Let me assure you: this room is kept well to itself. In fact, I've stayed here for a few days without being disturbed. Do you know why? You must know why. Where do you think I went after you struck me? Where do you think I hid myself in the interval until I could strike back at you? I was here, tending to my wounds. The ones you put on me."

"So--" and now he gripped her tighter "--you said you'd like to talk. We shall. You and I. But it won't be me speaking to you. You will speak to me. That strike. You will tell me what it is you did and the means by which you did it. All of it. Everything."

She closed her eyes.

He wanted information. So that was what this was about. Discovering how she had hurt him, learning how to stop it. She would have replied over my dead body but besides being a cliche, there was the possibility he would take that offer too seriously.

So she focused, instead.

She tried to shut him, this room, the whole situation, out of her mind. Try, he had said. So she would try. She tried, and she thought of glowing to push away Connor, to hurt Rory, to float up into Dagaz--even thought of the time she had used the power to glow as a human nightlight, when she'd had nightmares about Angelus.

She tried.

And dim, flickering, not enough to even zap a moth just yet--her skin began to glow in the dark of the room.

There. It was weak this time, fortunately (he was, it must be admitted, tensed and ready to stand against it if she got any bright [oh, ha ha] ideas to really let it fly again), but the smell of it--bright and light and electric--was certainly there. And that was enough. Weaker, yes, but the sense was the same. Any fire is all fire, the first and last ever to be, and the greatness or smallness of a fire does not diminish the presence of the fire (and fires can be fed and can grow).

So there was that light, weak, but present. An ember, a glow.

"By what means?" he asked and then he smiled. "Oh, you'll forgive me. Consider it professional curiosity, hmm? You've called me out by what I'm said to be. So you can't blame me for curiosity about this sort of thing. So. By what means can you create it?"

It was a shame he wouldn't have the time when he got back to his own world to drop her off in Algul Siento, what with all her glowing and potentially destructive inborn (? maybe) power. And wouldn't that do her boy a turn, to have his lady love end up among the Breakers (as if he'd know what they were, but whatever--it was the thought that counted).

She didn't talk.

Never a good sign with Cordelia Chase.

She had no plan to tell him a word about this, about her. G
But, god, this was harder to do when it wasn't an instinctive reaction to a situation. Also, thanks a lot body, for not feeling like this was dangerous enough a situation to trigger one of her little implosions.

A crackle. It was building, and she smiled, in self satisfaction. He could trap her in a room and threaten her, but she still had this.

And now he took a step back.

He could stop a gunslinger's gun cold, he could set fire to bullets in midair, he could slide between places and be missed, he could slip into shadow and hide himself. He had a pocketful of tricks to dodge a strike sent his way.

But, and this really was the pisser, she'd struck him once already and he didn't really fancy having to put up with that again.

Fuck yes.

The glowing stopped, as her self satisfaction grew. She felt tired and ached, like someone had slipped a hand inside of her skin, stretched her like a puppet, forced her to move in unnatural ways.

But he'd stepped back. He could talk all day about how damn powerful he was, but she'd glowed and he had stepped away, like she was a door that had hit him with an electric shock.

"You were saying?" she breathed.

"I was asking not for a demonstration but for an explanation."

He still kept his distance from her--close, but not too close, and always ready to guard against her. Which was not as pleasant state of affairs, it must be known (inversions of intentions rarely are pleasant).

"You weren't asking all that nicely," she pointed out.

"And more to the point, Bubba," Cordy paused there, debating the use of the word. He wasn't much of a Bubba. It sort of felt like calling Mussolini kiddo, but too late now. "More to the point, you threatened to leave me a blind stump. If you want information, you shouldn't have given me a reason to hold onto it."

Now he really threw back his head and laughed, like a wolf howling, like he was just overjoyed with mirth and delight, more of that gusty joy far too wild to be sane.

"But," he said, still laughing, "I think you'd make a really lovely blind stump!"

The threats hadn't really scared her. She'd heard worse.

The kidnapping hadn't scared her. It had mostly pissed her off.

Even the being-pushed-against-the-door hadn't scared her. She was used to having physical harm made against her and a little brute force wasn't enough to even annoy her anymore.

The laughter made her understood where the term blood ran cold came from. He really was completely--

Other.

"Thanks," she finally managed. "But no thanks."

He calmed to a giggle, but his words still came out jumpy and giddy with laughter themselves.

"All right, all right. No stumps. Not for the time being anyway." The laughter welled up again, then passed as much as it would. "Oh, but what I wouldn't give to draw out that power of yours and see it for myself--no, not in another demonstration, dear heart, not for the world. But I would love to pull it out and take it apart and take it, well, to heart myself. It seems a pretty thing."

Good.

Truth be told, she wasn't sure she could give another demonstration.

Suddenly more tired than she could explain, Cordy slumped against the door, falling down with her kneels curled up against her chest, breathing out a slow, quiet sigh, surprised by how much air she had been holding in.

"What if I had picked you over Bert?" she asked. "Then what? Play with me and kill me when you're bored?"

He crouched--hunkered, really, squatting there on his heels as he was wont to do, really--before her, considering her, regarding her.

"I don't know," he answered, still smiling a little. "If you'd chosen me, well, I wonder if I would have seen that neat little trick of yours. I might have toyed with you, knowing that there were more and others who wanted you. It would have been amusing to keep you out of his hands when he wanted you. That was some of the fun then, in those innocent days."

A veritable tangle of limbs now, he leaned his chin on his hand.

"He's spoiled it all, really, by telling you all these things, about who and what I am. He's right about them all. But so it goes. It was by my hand that he told, by my hand pulling on his strings as one pulls on the strings of a harp."

His smile turned wistful, charming, almost romantic.

"I wish you had chosen me. I think it would have been a delight. For however long it lasted. Perhaps the truth would have come out anyway. But it would have been a delight until then."

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