Sweet, Sour, and Sweet Again (The Monster at the End of this Book Remix)
Remix Author: Ari
Original Story: Sad Goodbye, Sweet Hello by vampedvixen
Summary: Two deaths, two monsters, two girls who remember.
Rating: PG
Fandom: Angel
Spoilers: through
At the end of this story, Fred will be dead. (Just so you know. If you read further, you will kill her.)
At the end of this story, Cordelia will be dead. (That one's on you, too.)
At the end of this story, Dennis will be dead. (This one's not your fault, since he's dead to begin with.)
To begin with, Dennis is dead.
It's fortunate for Dennis that he's dead, because this means he can't die of being sung at by Cordy and Fred, who have been persuaded by three bottles of strawberry wine that they are the genetic reincarnation of Cat Stevens, who isn't even dead. When Dennis was alive, Cat Stevens was a thing, so Dennis knows what "Trouble" and "Seasons in the Sun" are supposed to sound like, and it definitely isn't that. But being dead makes you remarkably tolerant, especially if all you have to tolerate is the smell of Purple Passion nail
polish and Cordelia's idea of a high C. It could be worse.
How could it be worse?
Well, if he were alive, for instance, and if he were reading this story -- in short, if he were you -- Dennis would be killing Cordelia. So on the whole it's fortunate he's dead and only handing her a hairbrush, hoping she'll move from on from singing and start with the makeovers.
But if you think Dennis has a bad headache, really, you should try being Cordelia for a day and then you'll learn something about pain. Also about makeovers, about lipstick, and how to Make It Big In Hollywood In Three Easy Steps.
Cordelia's got a lot of useless knowledge left over from her days as the queen of Sunnydale High. She's got a lot of useful knowledge about how to clean demon goo off the foyer floor.
And by the end of this story, Cordelia will be dead.
If you knew you were going to die, if you were Cordelia, if you were the queen of getting your way and the mistress of making people listen up, you'd try to stop it. If you felt your brain caving in, you'd ask your closest friend-who-happened-to-be-an-empath-demon what your future was and how to change it.
Lorne has to listen to her sing (but that's not the worst part of the story).
"What did you see?"
Lorne looks more drawn every day. "There's a monster at the end of your book, kid, and it looks like it's the end of the line."
"I'm getting killed by a monster?"
"Something like it."
"Anything less vague?"
"That's not the way this works."
"What about Fred? Can't you make Fred sing?"
But Lorne's known for a long time which way Fred's going down, and he's not spilling those beans. Just let the record state that Cordelia's not the only one facing the future with a grim grin and a vow of survival.
Let the record further state that the monsters at the end of this tale are already in place. Watching the world. Biding their time. Waiting. The women they watch are vessels, empty rotten human corpses that walk and breathe only because they still might be of some use to gods.
They don't see that Cordelia's skin is moist and her pores clear. They don't see the glow on Fred's cheeks when she publishes her contribution to the grand unified theory. They don't see them the way Gunn and Wesley and Angel see them, the way you see them.
From the perspective of a god-king, all you need to know about Cordelia and Fred is that they'll be dead at the end of their stories, killed by gods and monsters and by you, gentle reader.
Fred can't remember a time when she didn't know about monsters; five years in Pylea create a mental block so effective that no surgery or spell could cut through it. Fred cannot remember the girl she used to be. Cordelia can, and that's their difference. That's the reason for makeovers and strawberry wine and Anywhere But Here played over sweet-and-sour pork. Cordelia remembers what life used to be like and believes with her whole heart in the possibility of a world without monsters.
The monster who kills Cordelia slips in easily when Cordelia's looking hard the other way; the monster who kills Fred breaks through the surface with a struggle, gasping for breath with Fred's larynx and squeezing oxygen through Fred's lungs till Fred chokes on it, coughs, and dies.
(Don't say I didn't warn you.)
She's now the corpse Illyria always knew she was, and when she floats away from the body that's no longer hers, everything fades out, then in again, and she knows death is the only hypothesis that fits.
Fred's dead now, and she knows it. Cordelia, dead too, brushes comfort over what's left of Fred's soul, a little charred around the edges but still unmistakably Fred.
"C... Cordy?"
"Yeah, sweetie, it's me."
Fred knew she was a monster when the beasts of Pylea enslaved her, knew she was a creature alone in the darkness, and then she knew Cordelia, who was a monster like her, two girls in all her world who could be killed by green-skinned demons and who knew how to fight them. Yes, she knew Cordelia was a monster too; her stomach twisted in on itself last year when she saw Jasmine's true face, which was Cordy's true face, which was death. (She remembers now, and it hurts so much even Cordelia with her magic glowy powers can't fix it. Worse, she sees, and remembers dying.)
It could be worse, perhaps; they could be ghosts like Dennis or killers like you and I, but now they watch the world from Olympus, and they know that human bodies are just flesh, of possible use to gods. Possibly, just possibly, Cordelia has the power and Fred the brains to destroy both human- and god-kind, with a flash-flood or with a blizzard, and Cordelia recognizes the impulse and quells it, turns her energy to Fred.
They're dead, but not destroyed, and if it's true that only monsters survive the alleyway, then Fred and Cordelia, just themselves, are monsters too, at the end of the story.
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