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[unflagging]

[Herein shall there be PSLs and goings-on.

Please exercise caution if you so choose to read this. Flagg being Flagg, I cannot guarantee everything that goes on here will be safe for work or even safe for life.]

Comments

[unflagging]

"If you're counting both him and his friends--so strange to hear it in that order, you know; normally he's mentioned secondarily to the friends and the friends are mentioned by name, but I digress--it's been for...several hundred years now, I think." Another pause while he considered a little mental mathematics. "Yes, several hundred years now. At least."

[advancedbosoms]

A shrug, a gesture as if to say I told you so. Knowing Cordelia, the implication was probably meant to be more of a Duh.

"That's not the path a man who gets bored takes. That's a plotting path. Like a chess game, making one move and thinking three ahead. Isn't that right?"

There were two types of villains in the world, as far as Cordy was concerned. Spike had been the first kind, who caused chaos for the sake of not wanting peace. He had hurt out of boredom. Angelus was another kind of evil. He taunted and teased and drew pain out and set up traps that took years to unravel, all to watch and gain pleasure out of it.

Rory was definitely not a Spike.

[unflagging]

"But I do get bored, you know. And I hate getting bored. Sometimes it takes so long for someone else to make a move. It gets so tedious."

No, it was true: he played the long game. The very long game. He played by weeks and months and years and generations. He could and would and had set things in motion whose ultimate results would not tumble into place until decades had passed and worlds had changed--indeed, not until some had passed from one world to another, and that does not always mean death. Take the Lady of Shadows, for an example. Or the Lady Gabrielle for another. And why not?

"Well. Congratulations. You've got me talking after all, haven't you?"

[advancedbosoms]

"Told you. You like the sound of your own voice too much."

She looked around the room for a moment. She needed sole kind of weapon. The altar was good enough for now but unless he planned to talk her to sleep, she would need to find some way to get out, and a weapon was as good a start as any.

"If you're so bored, you could take up sudoku. Maybe cross stitching."

[unflagging]

"They're not really to my taste, I'm afraid. And there's nothing to see here, really, so you needn't keep searching around the room."

He'd chosen this room, with all its spareness and emptiness, with absolute purpose.

[advancedbosoms]

"No offense, but I'll double check for that myself."

What would Nancy Drew do?

Probably not get herself locked up with this guy in the first place. But say she did. What then? A loose piece of altar to his head? A hairpin in his jugular? (It was possible, she thought, that she was remembering Nancy as being more violent than she really had been).

"So what happened to Mrs. Wizard, then, if that part was true?"

[unflagging]

Nancy Drew and the Fight to Remember. That manuscript likely never got published.

"It was true. And she died. Obviously. And her name wasn't 'Mrs. Wizard.' It was Flagg. The same as mine. Mrs. Randall Flagg, née Nadine Cross. And she fell to her death from a very, very high rooftop while pregnant with our child. By that point, she was really quite mentally unstable. Are you happy now?"

[advancedbosoms]

She propped her chin in her palm, listening to the sad, sad tale with very little sympathy.

"I can only imagine that would have to be the case, if she was married to you. Anyway, you keep asking that. If I'm happy, if I'm content. Is that how you get your rocks off? Information?"

[unflagging]

"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."

[advancedbosoms]

"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?"

[unflagging]

"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."

[advancedbosoms]

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?"

[unflagging]

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."

[advancedbosoms]

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.

[unflagging]

"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.

[advancedbosoms]

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?"

[unflagging]

"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.

[advancedbosoms]

"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!"

[unflagging]

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?"

[advancedbosoms]

"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.

[unflagging]

"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."

[advancedbosoms]

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.

[unflagging]

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).

[advancedbosoms]

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.

[unflagging]

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.