She wants to pick at her elbows. Her fingers ache for distraction: thorny vulnerability rests low in her gut, as well as the slight sense of intrusion, interruption. This isn’t her place. She can feel it.
”—-Cordelia,” she says, almost carefully.
She’s not sure where the strikes of insecurity take root: whether they grew from the years between her last meeting with Cordelia or whether they originate in the fact that just a few months ago, she was declared dead: put under ground in a wooden coffin, left to decompansate and rot, alone in a pair of heels and a long, black dress.
(Either way, she wants to look down.)
“I’m here to see Angel, actually.”
A pause. She lets her words sink in and hopes, hopes.
”Is he here?”
Cordelia’s struck by the image before her. She had heard about what happened to Buffy, how she came back, but seeing one of the few people who could actually keep up with her in high school barely able to look her in the eye is– - dismaying, to say the least.
"Angel’s not here.“
She shakes her head sympathetically. Getting out of her chair, she walks around her desk, perching on the front of it instead.
"He’s out on a long-distance case, and probably won’t be back for a while.”
She’s not sure why, but she feels like she owes Buffy an explanation. It probably has something to do with the lost look in the Slayer’s eyes; helping the hopeless, right?
[She almost grimaces as that last thought flits through her mind.]
“ Can I help?” The offer lingers in the air, tentatively bridging the gap between the two women.
