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Shadows Still Remain	By : addielogan Category: Angel the Series > Het - Male/Female > Angel(us)/Cordelia > Angel(us)/Cordelia Views: 3578 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Angel: The Series, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
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Cordelia didn't go through any of the things
Angel had told her were hers before she went to bed, but when she woke up the
next morning, the temptation was too strong not to see what was there. Some of
her clothes were in the closet and a few items were on the nightstand, but for
the most part, it was all in boxes.
She started with the boxes, opening the
first one and carefully going through things, hoping she'd find the key to
jogging her memory. Much of it, however, seemed completely foreign to her, and it
was strange to think of the things in those boxes as being the accumulation of
her life.
Pictures seemed to afford her the most luck,
the faces printed there still etched somewhere in her mind as well. She sat on
the edge of the bed, flipping through a handful, remembering names, places, as
well of snippets of events as she looked at the snapshots left behind.
While the memories were still hazy, she
could remember the people she'd cared about. Wesley, Gunn, Fred�they'd been
more than friends. They'd been her family.
And they were all dead.
She could almost feel her heart break when
the meaning behind what Angel had told her the night before fully hit her with
a great, painful twisting in her chest. She dropped the photographs to the
ground and buried her face in her hands, sobbing with the weight of the loss.
Cordelia didn't know how long she'd been
there before she felt Angel beside her, his arms wrapping around her to pull
her close. She turned without hesitation into his embrace and pressed her face
against his chest, welcoming his comfort.
Finally, Cordelia pulled away, wiping her
eyes, even though she was still crying softly. "I don't really remember
like I think I should, but�"
"It still hurts to know you've lost
them?" Angel finished for her.
"Yeah."
Cordelia looked at Angel, and the pain he
saw in her eyes cut him deeply. The last year brought him nothing good, and had
cost him more than he'd been willing to pay. Now Cordelia was suffering because
of his mistakes, his failures.
"Angel�what�" Cordelia paused for
a moment, as if she was struggling to push her thoughts into words. "What
were we?"
"I don't understand what you're
asking," Angel replied, his brow furrowing.
"We were in love," Cordelia said,
trying to clarify.
"That's not a question, is it?"
"No. I�I know we were, I just..."
Angel smiled softly and stroked her cheek,
the certainty she felt where their feelings for each other were concerned doing
much to assure him that this time was not like the last one. This time, it
wasn't a question�she knew enough of herself to remember what she had felt for
him. "You want to know if we were together�a couple?" Angel asked
her.
Cordelia nodded. "Yes."
His smile faded and his hand dropped away
from her. "No. We never were. But you're right, we were in love."
"How long ago?"
Angel thought about her question for a
moment. How long had it been since he'd truly seen Cordelia, her short visit
when he'd still been CEO of Wolfram and Hart notwithstanding? Had the woman who
had come back from the Higher Realms ever been Cordelia, or was she no
more than a puppet the entire time?
"About two years," Angel answered.
Cordelia's eyes widened, the time frame
Angel had given her longer than she'd expected. "That's a long�" She
stopped, swallowing hard before she said, "Angel, tell me who I was."
He didn't know how to tell her what they'd
been to each other, so he answered her request the best way he could. Angel
started at the beginning, telling her what he remembered of her from Sunnydale
all the way up to her visit with him the day he'd thought she'd died. When
something confused her, he'd stop, speak more clearly or reword it until she
understood.
Things he told her triggered little bits of
memories in Cordelia's mind, letting her know that her life was still there
somewhere in her mind, only buried beneath the surface.
At some point during Angel's long answer to
her question, they'd both ended up lying down on the bed, on their sides,
facing each other but with a small distance between them. Occasionally, Angel
would take her hand or wipe away her tears if something he told her was too
much.
Cordelia couldn't deny the intimacy between
them, the knowledge that this man was not a stranger acute even with the holes
in her memory. His face seemed more familiar to hers than her own.
Even when he admitted to her that he was a
vampire, she didn't flinch, didn't pull away from him. Somehow she knew he
wasn't the threat the vampires she'd fought over the past couple of weeks had
been, even before he explained to her about his soul. She wasn't sure if it was
because of something in her lost memories standing out or because the tingles
she got on the back of her neck whenever he was around were different to the
ones she'd felt with other vampires, but his admission hadn't even come as much
of a shock.
When Angel finally told her everything he
had to tell, Cordelia closed her eyes, a deep, shuddering breath passing
through her. The end had been the hardest for her to listen to, as well as the
part that seemed least familiar. None of what Angel told her about the time
leading up to the appearance of "Jasmine" rang any bells in her mind
at all, and she was inclined to agree with his thoughts that it may have not
been her at all�at least as far as her conscious mind was concerned.
But what did it all mean for her now? How
had she gotten from a hospital bed in a coma�and supposedly dead�to wherever it
was she'd been when she'd woken up two weeks earlier? Furthermore, why was she
the way she was now? Why were her memories just out of reach? What had happened
to her to bring her to this state?
"I'm still lost," she whispered.
"I know," Angel replied. He hesitated
for a moment before closing the gap between them and bringing Cordelia into his
arms. She settled against his chest, the comfort of his embrace soothing the
ache hearing the story of who she'd been had caused.
They stayed like that, silent for a long
while, until Cordelia's stomach rumbled, and she blushed at the sound.
"Sorry."
"It's okay. You do have to eat."
Angel pulled back so he could look down at her face. "I don't have any
food here except, well, blood, and I don't think you'd want to eat that."
Cordelia's nose wrinkled. "Not
really."
"There's a Chinese food place nearby
that delivers you always liked. I could order you something from there."
"Okay. Do you remember what food I
liked there?"
"I do," Angel told her. "Do
you want to come downstairs, or�"
"I'll come downstairs," Cordelia
said, not wanting to be apart from Angel now. He felt like her only solid link
to who she was, and she didn't want to let go.
They got off the bed and walked to the door,
a moment of hesitation between them for a moment before Angel reached down and
took her hand.

***
*** ***
"You did remember what I like,"
Cordelia said to Angel as she finished her food. She smiled warmly at him.
"Thank you."
Angel shrugged. "I have a good
memory."
"That makes one of us," Cordelia
replied. "Still, it was sweet of you to get something you knew I'd enjoy.
You've been� Thank you, for helping me."
"I couldn't not help you,
Cordy," Angel said. "You mean more to me than�" He stopped,
letting the unfinished sentiment fall between them.
"I feel comfortable here," she
told him. "I know this place."
"You don't ever have to leave it�if you
don't want to."
His offer pulled Cordelia to meet his eyes.
"What�" She stopped for a moment, frowning as she tried to form her
question. "What would we be if I stayed?"
"Friends," Angel replied, though
an almost imperceptible flash of pain went across his face as he said it.
"I don't think I can have anything else with you."
"Do you not want to?"
"I want to. I really want to.
You're� Well, what man wouldn't want you, breathing or not?" Angel smiled
for a moment before it faded. "My love life�it's complicated. I'm not sure
it would be safe for you to be a part of it. Besides, you're working to get
your memories back, and a relationship could only confuse everything even more."
Cordelia looked down, her eyes fixated on an
imagined spot in front of her. "I don't remember a lot, that's true,
though it does feel like my memories are coming back, especially since I've
been here. But I have no doubt about my feelings for you, whether I can
remember specific moments we spent together or not." Her eyes came back up
to lock with Angel's. "Your name was familiar to me before even my own
was. When Anne first found me and everything seemed completely lost, I could
still close my eyes and see yours. There's something� There's something strong
between us."
"I know," Angel admitted.
"That's why we can't be together. I can't be happy."
Cordelia's brow knitted, his declaration
that he couldn't be happy triggering something in her memory, though she
couldn't quite access it. "Why can't you be happy?"
"My soul comes with a curse,"
Angel explained. "If I experience a moment of true happiness, I lose the
soul. The only time this happened without some sort of extra magical
intervention was when I was in a relationship and it got�physical."
"So you can't ever have sex?"
Cordelia asked, her nose wrinkling.
"I can. I have," Angel replied.
"But after what happened before, with her, I'm cautious about it, and
there's just too much risk involved when it comes to a woman who really means
something to me. If I gave in to what I want with you, Cordy, I could end up
hurting you, and that's something that's always held me back. I love you, and
being with you, well, it would make me really happy. I can't take the risk of
that turning me�"
"Into Angelus," Cordelia finished
for him.
Angel blinked. "You remember
that?"
"Sort of." Cordelia frowned.
"It's weird. It's like the memories are there, they're just all cloudy. Things
have been clearing up, and it feels like the more I'm around you, the more
normal I feel, but the bulk of my past is still all hazy. Like I'm seeing it
all through heavy fog."
"You've been talking more since I
brought you here," Angel pointed out.
"I feel more comfortable. I don't know
if it's because I know you, or because there's just less going on and fewer
people around than when I was helping Anne at the shelter. It all seemed a
little overwhelming, and I was uncomfortable trying to talk, but now the more I
talk to you, the easier it seems to become," Cordelia explained.
"Maybe it'll be the same way with your
memories," Angel said, glad their conversation seemed to turn away from
any possible romantic aspects of their relationship. It tore him apart inside
to think he couldn't be with her, but the fear of what he could become if he
let himself go with her kept him held back. He'd thought maybe at one point it
could possibly be something they could risk, but he remembered the
"perfect day" the shaman had given him to remove his soul the last
time and the prominent role Cordelia had played there. Nothing frightened him
more than the thought of reverting to Angelus and killing Cordelia because he
couldn't control what he felt for her.
"I hope so," Cordelia replied.
"I don't like this feeling of not remembering exactly who I am."
"Why don't we walk around the hotel for
a bit," Angel suggested. "I can tell you things that happened in
different places, and maybe being there again will jumpstart your memory."
"Sounds like as good an idea as
any," Cordelia said with a shrug.
"Then let's get started."

***
*** ***
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Shadows Still Remain