unflagging | [ ρѕℓ ]

Cold wasn't right.

Maybe it was the demon part of her, or maybe it was that light of hers. Maybe just the fact that he wasn't the first evil thing inside of her.

Whatever it was, she wasn't any colder than she had been.

As he fell on top of her, she stopped fighting. Cordelia lay between him and the cold of the stone, suddenly still. She was satiated and empty all at once, pleased and ill, numb and over sensitized.

She wondered if she was going to be sick on him, but she didn't care quite enough to move.

When she spoke, it was with the same tone a person might use when mentioning a dead rat on their floor. Clipped, disgusted, cold.

"Was it good for you?"

He laughed, hoarse and breathy, and rolled off of her at last.

"Better than the first time, definitely."

She leapt up. She ran across the room, she slammed the door behind her, she locked him in. She gathered Bert and they left the temple, somehow, going somewhere far away from this man.

Only she didn't do any of it.

She imagined it, but she remained where she was. Naked, bruised, bleeding. Staring at the ceiling.

What would it be like, she wondered, to be this man's other? Was it always like this? Rough and twisted and full of shame after? Or was it something you grew used to, like a strong smell that gradually seemed to fade, the longer you were exposed to it?

"Don't you ever wanted to be loved, Flagg? Aren't you lonely?"

Cordelia, you are officially terrible at pillow-talk. That's all there is to say about that.

He let his head loll towards her and grinned at her.

"I have been loved. Does that surprise you? I have been loved and adored. I've had some say they were even willing to give their lives for me."

Lonely was another matter entirely.

"Did they know you?" she asked.

She even turned to look at him, though she didn't offer a smile in return.

"Or was it like someone falling in love with Rory Fletcher?"

He stretched languidly and rolled onto his stomach. The size of this altar (or whatever it might be) was truly a boon (it would be in bad taste to call it a blessing, wouldn't it?).

"Some did, some didn't. Some knew full well who I was from the outset, some came to know it, others never understood. But I very much doubt that even for them it was like falling in love with Rory Fletcher."

Another smile, just for her.

"I like how you're picking and choosing names for me now. Who I am, what I call myself."

"You told me what you want to be called."

Which was true. But she wasn't doing it as any service to him. He was right. Rory hadn't been evil, as far as she'd known. No murder, no rape, no kicking puppies. Best to separate the idea of that affable widower from Nebraska (and look at that) from this person beside her now.

"I half expected you to break my neck."

And she raised a hand to touch her neck, absently, as if verifying that no, he hadn't.

Even if maybe that would have been for the best.

"Now where would breaking your neck have gotten us? I told you already: I was going to cut off your limbs, take our your eyes, deafen you on one side, break your voice, and keep you for my own. Breaking your neck would be a fast end to all of that." A pout. "And a shame, really."

"Yeah, well, I guess I assumed that you weren't going to take all the time to do that mid-fuck. But maybe you're more talented than I realized."

Ah yes. Look at her joking about the matter, as though it were some inside joke and not a threat to her person.

"Changed your mind, I hope."

He ran a hand through his hair, looked away, looked back at her. All very casual.

"For the moment, yes."

"Well, that's something."

Something mostly being incentive to go, really. She'd made enough mistakes to last her a few centuries tonight. No need to press her luck and stay past her window of grace.

She sat up, drawing her shirt up against herself.

"The key's on the floor," he said, draping himself a little dramatically across the stone. "Just in case you forgot."

For a moment, Cordelia considered taking offense at the comment; but all things considered, it seemed like a waste of her time.

So she slid off the altar without looking at him, pausing there to redress. She took her time, purposefully slow and casual, as if this had not been a completely scarring experience, as if she wasn't drowning in guilt at the very moment.

"I remember."

He lay there, still stretched on his stomach, with his head resting on his folded arms, and he laughed. Quietly at first, just a grin towards the stone, then louder, a ringing sound in this round room.

He calmed himself again with a sigh and watched her as she dressed. Such a shame to see all those lovely curves disappear under those clothes again.

"I'm so glad you do."

She went to the key before she commented. Keep calm, walk to the key and pick it up as though this were any number of encounters she'd had in her life. Not as if it had been a colossally huge mistake.

"Something funny?" Cordelia asked, after she had crouched down to pick up the abandoned key.

"Oh, nothing really. Maybe it's only funny to me."

He slid down to the floor himself now, collecting discarded his discarded shirt, his tossed-aside jeans. He passed a hand over his face and magicked off the blood as easily as he'd magicked off the spittle before. He flung it aside, a deft snap of his fingers. It spattered on the wall--only pinprick spots of red.

"I am glad you remember, though. Oh, truly, I am."

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