Every night had been like this. Sleep had ceased to come easy since the day Vocah invaded her mind, and tonight proved to be no exception. Cordelia didn't even realize she wasn't caught in anything more than a nightmare until she jolted awake with a gasp, phantom echoes of so much pain and anguish still throbbing through her head.
They weren't real. It was always hard to remember in those first few moments caught between the worlds of dreams and reality, but everything that haunted her now had - in one way or another - already come to pass. It had been real then, but it wasn't now. There was nothing she could do for those countless voices crying out to her; hadn't been then either, really, when all seeing them did was drive her to insanity.
That knowledge didn't stop the racing of her heart, though, nor the hitch in her breath as she sat up and slipped out of bed. Thankfully, there was one other thing here, at least, that could prove it - could shake away the last remnants of the notion that this was what really wasn't real, and any second now she'd come to strapped back down to that hospital bed.
"Angel?" Her voice was uncharacteristically small as she stepped out into her own living room, bare feet near-soundless against cold hardwood. (The bedroom door clicked softly shut behind her, the ever-lingering presence of her roommate fading behind it, and Cordelia made a mental note to thank Dennis later for the privacy.) Angel was right where Cordelia had expected to find him: exactly where she'd left him hours earlier, sprawled on her couch with some old, stuffy tome of a book in hand.
It was so incredibly boring. A mundane, boring relief. Angel had been the one to pull her out of that hell to begin with; he wouldn't be lounging in front of her, reading whatever monster-book-of-the-week he was fixated on now, if she was truly trapped back in it.
"You haven't just been sitting there and brooding all night, have you? You're practically quieter than Phantom Dennis, and when your competition is a ghost who can't talk back even if he wants to, you know that's really saying something." There was no real bite behind her bark tonight, though; it was just easier than falling apart at the seams right in front of him would be. So Cordelia wielded meaningless quips like a shield as she curled up on the couch, arms winding tight around her legs and chin perched on her knees, close enough to Angel to touch yet not quite daring to bridge the distance. // @crownedhopelesss | @weareheroes + plotted starter!
