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Thoughts swam and swirled through Cordelia's mind as she slowly climbed into bed, a confused tiny frown etched across her soft full lips. Fractured images and memories flitted across the screen of her inner-imagination only to dance and mingle with the disjointed ideas and words that were born there.
She was...confused.
Harmony had dragged a whole set of, what she thought had been long buried, issues out of her proverbial skeleton's closet and conveniently created a complete set of *new* issues to keep them company. Now, she was trying to reorder her mind, to separate the mix of emotions flooding through her and to understand *why* she reacted and felt as she did.
It was difficult. This...self-analysis and honesty with herself was not something she was very good at yet. It was still too new. Her skills at it were rough and shaky...but she was trying.
She no longer had a choice in the matter, actually. Her visions were too intense...too overwhelming. She *had* to know who and what she was without any doubt...or she feared she might not be strong enough to pull herself back out of the visions. That she would become lost in them...with no true awareness of herself. That loss of self had happened once before and it had almost shredded her mind into bloody pieces of destroyed sanity.
So...late night sessions of delving into her own mind to work through her thoughts and feelings were...necessary. Especially when things became so confusing. Like they were now.
Harmony.
Cordelia thought of who she had been back in Sunnydale and compared her past-self to who she was now. She was so different then, not only who she was...but also from who she had thought she would grow up to be. Her priorities were...beyond different. It was as if her entire spectrum had changed...not just a shifting from one end of the scale to the other. And the blonde vampire with the face and memories of one of her oldest friends had highlighted that fact in a way that made it almost painfully obvious.
Yes. She *still* enjoyed nice clothes. Fashion was still important to her.
The guys would be quick to point that out. They would be quick to think, although they would never say it out loud, that she was vain. They would be wrong.
Granted...when she had still been a young girl in Sunnydale, fashionable clothes had been a vanity. A status symbol. A way to set her apart, and above, the crowd. Now? Now clothes were important to her for a different reason. Clothing was now one of the few joys and luxuries that she had left in her life.
She faced unimaginable evil and horror and pain every. single. day. She couldn't stop, couldn't walk away. Even if she wanted to. The PTB had chosen her as Doyle's heir and now she was Angel's Seer. She had the pain and the horror and the evil invading her mind, punishing her with it's very presence in the world. Wes could leave. Gunn could leave. Angel could, and did for a brief while, leave. But she couldn't. Ever. It would follow her where ever she went, whatever she did. So...clothes. They were her one small spot of joy and happiness. Not vanity. A refuge.
Harmony was vain.
And shallow.
Evil.
Cordy was glad that she had stopped by, not for the betrayal thing...which was another issue to deal with, but because the fact that Harmony had so obviously *not* grown and changed and evolved had highlighted and *clarified* just how much *she* had. The comparison between 'old' Cordy and 'new' Cordy was so much easier with Harmony Crandel as a...sort of reflection.
The betrayal had been bad. It hurt. Deeply. However, she mostly felt stupid.
She *knew* that Harmony was a vampire. Evil. Undead...and she had been warned about trusting her. By her friends, but her own mind...but her heart? Her heart just wanted her friend back, faults and all. Just one more tiny piece of happiness in a world filled with badness and pain.
Now that she had time to step away from the anger and the hurt, she was able to see that Harmony was also in pain. Also lost and lonely. The blonde vampire was trapped in a world she didn't understand, vying for power and status because that was what she had been raised to do...yet the rules for gaining and holding that power was not a system that she could comprehend.
Harmony understood fashion and music and high society whims. And that life had been cut off forever. Exchanged for brutality and ugliness and hatred.
And Harmony didn't understand why she was suddenly a loser among her own kind. She didn't understand that physical beauty was relatively unimportant in undead society. But Cordelia *did*. After all, the Master had been as ugly as sin...but his name was *still* whispered in fear and awe by fledglings.
As Cordelia lay back in her bed, silently contemplating Harmony and the blonde's own confusion and pain she felt the last of her anger and hurt slip away to be replaced by compassion and understanding. She quietly forgave Harmony for her betrayal...though she would never forget and she would never again be so naive as to trust her once more. But she could forgive her.
Of course...that left one last issue to deal with. The one that confused her more than hurt her. The one that could possibly be a good thing, something to be able to allow her to one day thank Harmony for coming, that it was worth the pain of betrayal to learn this lesson.
But...then again, maybe not.
She had thought that Harmony had been...lusting after her. Sexually. No one had bothered to tell her that her former best friend had been turned, or that she had been the on-again-off-again girlfriend of her *now* best friend's childe, Spike. She had been completely clueless about Harmony's status as a member of the evil undead, so when Harmony had admitted to finding Cordy "luscious" and "alluring" to the point where she could barely control herself, Cordelia had automatically *assumed* that the blonde meant that in a *sexual* way.
At first it had been embarrassing to be wrong...and a little scary. But, she had gotten over that when she realized that Harmony had been fighting with herself to *not* bite her or kill her because deep inside, Harmony *did* love her. As a friend.
So...she had opened up some of Angel's blood-bags that she kept on hand and they had talked. Well, Harmony talked. She filled Cordelia in with the details after she had eaten and Cordy had finished her brief call to Willow.
It was at that point that Cordy had confessed her misunderstanding to Harmony.
Cordelia had tried to make light of it, not wanting to offend her friend...or piss off a vampire in her home...but she didn't get the reaction she had expected. Harmony hadn't been insulted that Cordelia had thought that the blonde was gay. Which was odd, because while she herself was okay with the idea, after all...she knew two gay couples and counted them as her closest friends. Willow and Tara on the female side of the equation...and Wes and Gunn on the male side. But Harmony? She had precise memories of a younger and more alive Harmony Crandel giving a haughty and self-righteous little speech about the evil's and wrongness of gay people after that football player...uh, Larry something or other, had 'come out' as gay in high school.
So...she had expected Harmony to have been...upset over Cordelia's misunderstanding. Instead, Harmony had gotten a faraway look in her eyes, as if really considering the idea for the first time. Then, she had turned back to Cordelia, shrugged with a flirty little smile and shifted closer.
"I don't know if I *would* want you that way. I mean...yes, you *are* very beautiful...I've always known that, but...I've never had *sex* with a female...so I don't even know if I'd like it. But...no time like the present to find out, huh?" And then she had leaned forward and kissed Cordelia on the lips. Harmony's mouth had been disturbingly cool and it tasted faintly metallic...like coppery blood. And that had shocked Cordelia so badly that she hadn't considered any other aspect of it at all. She hadn't pulled away...but she hadn't responded either. She was just...numb.
It was Harmony who had broken the kiss. She had moaned with such intense longing and desire that it had broken Cordy out of her paralysis. A wave of almost bashful confusion washed over her as she realized that, despite the fact that Harmony's lips had been too cool, the kiss had been...nice. Sweet.
Liquid. She was a little rattled over the fact that it *had* been...enjoyable.
But then Harmony put an end to any vague thoughts of experimenting some more by admitting that the kiss had tempted her to lick, nibble...and maybe even bite Cordelia. And *that* thought had NO appeal at all, so Cordy had agreed.
No more smooches.
Then they had cleared the air and completely changed the subject by suggesting an old fashion beauty makeover. Toenails first. And it had been great. Like old times and Cordelia suddenly felt young again and the weight of the world hadn't rested on her shoulders for just a little while.
Until the guys burst in and then things got...crazy.
Now...now here she was, lying in her bed with the dark and the quiet all around her, thinking and remembering. And wondering.
Would that kiss have been even better if Harmony were a male...or if she had been human. *Something* had been missing...wrong. But which was it?
Cordelia didn't know.
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