Cordelia Chase (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
allaboutme) wrote2016-06-06 05:04 pm
allaboutme) wrote2016-06-06 05:04 pm
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Character Name: Cordelia Chase
Series: Buffy the Vampire Slayer & Angel the Series
Timeline: The end of Angel 2x19 "Belonging" after going through the portal
Canon Resource Link: Buffy wiki
Character History:
When we first meet Cordelia Chase, she rules Sunnydale High School as 'Queen C' - the most popular girl in school, with a clique of followers known as the Cordettes. She's actually the first character to befriend new girl Buffy Summers, recognizing her as potentially cool. She shares her book in class with Buffy and introduces herself, helping her to find the library, and giving her a brief pop quiz to test her coolness factor (Vamp nail polish: over, James Spader: hot, John Tesh: the devil). While she invites Buffy to hang out with her at the local hot spot, the Bronze, Buffy becomes a little uncertain about accepting her friendship after Cordelia is visibly a bitch to Willow Rosenberg in front of her, dismissing her as a loser and warning Buffy to stay away from her kind. The gossip queen becomes freaked out by Buffy's morbid fascination with a student who dies at their school, and when Buffy accidentally winds up pulling a stake on her at the Bronze, she decides that the new girl is crazy, and quickly spreads the news to everyone breathing (on her cellphone, no less, which was a clear indicator of just how rich her family was when a high schooler had one in 1996).
When one of her 'loser' classmates, Jesse, was turned into a vampire, Cordelia was actually stunned enough by his new look and attitude to agree to dance with him at the Bronze. However, when the club was attacked by vampires, she was nearly eaten by one of them, when the vampire Darla volunteered her as fodder, and she only lived because Buffy Summers saved her life. She had a second brush with death not long after, when Jesse himself tried to eat her, and that time she was saved by one of the other losers she'd long dismissed - Xander Harris. The shock and trauma of the vampire attack was too much for Cordelia, and her mind blanked out most of the memory - except for the part about how that weirdo Buffy Summers apparently knew the attackers, who she figured were some kind of gang members.
Cordelia set her sights on making the varsity cheerleading squad, wanting to fulfill her dream of being adored by everyone in the school, but when a fellow student, Amy, potentially messed up her try-out, she cornered her and threatened her in the locker room. Little did she know that Amy was actually body-swapped with her insane mother, a witch who proceeded to voodoo curse Cordelia into going blind during driver's training, landing her in a car crash. The spell eventually wore off after Buffy dealt with the witch, and Cordelia made the squad after all.
Cordy proceeded to get increasingly annoyed with Buffy Summers' presence - particularly because she kept drawing the attention of other hot guys who Cordelia was interested in, not the least of which was mysterious "salty goodness", Angel. She participated in the school talent show, doing a terrible rendition of "The Greatest Love of All", but became upset when another student turned up dead - because it could have been her, not because of any sympathy for the actual dead. She was characteristically a diva about the talent show, trying to demand that Giles rearrange the order of acts so that other songs don't 'ruin the mood' of hers, but on the actual night, suffered from stage fright about being judged before she goes on.
Her strange high school experience continued - tarantulas burst out of a classmate's textbook during class, she found herself awaking with violently terrible hair as her worst nightmare came true - but she remained ignorant of exactly what was going on in her town. She campaigned enthusiastically for the title of May Queen, handing out chocolates and having a bunch of girls help tailor her a dress. However, when a series of accidents kept surrounding her campaign, she turned to Buffy for help, having noticed that she was really strong and had a lot of weapons ( and mistakenly assuming she was in a gang ). She refused to drop out, because it would mean that the person working against her had won, and defended her obsession with winning as important, claiming that popularity was a responsibility, and that it was preferable to being alone. Her stalker turned out to be a crazed invisible girl named Marcie, who kidnapped and tied her up on stage with Buffy, threatening to scar up the face she was so vain about and make it truly 'memorable'. Buffy saved her life, and this time, Cordelia displayed real gratitude... at least until they were in public, where she swore she'd never hang out with their social leper colony.
She dated a guy named Kevin until he was murdered by vampires, and when the Hellmouth itself exploded in the library while it was under attack by said creatures of the night, she was there and saw everything, learning the truth about Sunnydale, and about how Buffy Summers was the Slayer. She took the news entirely in stride, none of it dampening her excitement for the upcoming dance at the Bronze.
She spent the following summer in Tuscany, which she complained about upon returning (her parents had promised her they'd take her to St. Croix, and she felt she'd had to suffer with no beaches). Upon running back into the Scoobies, she eagerly asked if they'd fought any demons over the summer. They tried to write it off, but she called them out on how she'd seen everything, and promised she wasn't going to tell anyone - after all, it would involve admitting hanging out with them. She opened up about being scared by it, and told them she hadn't wanted to think about it much, but when Buffy proceeded to insult her, her feelings were clearly hurt and she shut down. She would later be the only one willing to call out Buffy for acting like a bitch in toying with Xander at the Bronze, telling her that even though they weren't friends, she was going to give her some advice - to get over it. She was then kidnapped by a vampire trying to resurrect the Master, since she was present during his death, and Buffy saved her again, although she was more concerned with how she was supposed to get the stains out of her clothes than thanking her.
Annoyed about mandatory participation in the science fair, Cordelia turned to brainy Willow for help, admitting she didn't want to ask Chris Epps for help because it would dredge up emotions about his dead brother, Daryl, for her (a senior all-state runningback she'd been into, who had died rock-climbing a few years before). However, she found herself targeted by Chris, who had brought his brother back from the dead and was building him a Franken-bride - one he intended to use Cordelia's head for. When Xander saved her, she showed real gratitude, calling him brave and heroic, and offering to do anything she could to pay him back, but he blew her off for Willow.
After that, she took a slightly more pro-active stance with the Scoobies, even helping to sharpen stakes for a showdown Buffy was going to have with new vampire player in town, Spike. When Spike attacked the school, she survived by hiding in a broom closet with Willow, fervently praying to God that if he saved her, she wouldn't be mean to anyone else ever again... unless they deserved it.
Following her brief excitement about getting a hot Swedish exchange student, Cordelia fixed her sights on Richard, a local college boy, who invited her to bring Buffy to a frat party. Eager to impress him, she insisted Buffy go, and coached her on how not to embarrass her, but it turned out that Richard's frat just wanted to sacrifice them both in a dark ritual. Saved by Buffy again, Cordy was happy to credit Angel and inform Buffy that she hated her and her friends.
Annoyed with being brushed off by Devon, a singer she was dating, she fixed her sights back on Angel, flirting with him while he was waiting for Buffy, and even drawing a rare smile from him, and pressing Buffy for more details about his life. The Slayer told her that Angel was a vampire, but she assumed that Buffy was just being jealous and trying to scare her off. When most people in town began morphing into the Halloween costumes they were wearing, Cordelia remained unaffected, since she'd bought her costume elsewhere, and stuck close to Xander and Angel to survive. She was notably impressed with Xander's soldier-costume alter-ego, and honestly disappointed when Angel was fixated on Buffy in the aftermath, seeming to finally accept that she wasn't going to draw his attention away from her.
On career day, she received 'personal shopper' or 'motivational speaker' as her likely future, and reluctantly agreed to go with Xander to look for Buffy since she was the only one with a car. They wound up running afoul of a creepy guy who was composed of bugs, and afterwards, got in a heated argument about going to help Buffy, that exploded into "I hate you"s, and then makeouts. She tried to avoid Xander afterwards, but when he confronted her about how awful it was, they wound up making out again. They began a strictly physical relationship that didn't lessen their tendency to insult each other, and they kept it secret from their friends. When Buffy was accused of killing her mother's boyfriend, she pointed out that she thought Buffy should have different rules, like Superman, or a fascist society. She did agree to go help investigate said boyfriend, and found his dead former wives in his closet (turns out he was a robot, surprise). She got annoyed at Xander for telling her he'd rather not hear her talk while they were necking later, and refused to partner with him on the class 'raise an egg baby' assignment, but still hooked up with him later while looking around to investigate a missing teacher. Annnd then she got possessed by a creepy monster hatching out of the egg for a little while. Just Sunnydale things.
Buffy's birthday rolled around and Xander asked if they wanted to go together, but she denied they were dating, saying she was the one with something to be ashamed of. Still, she got jealous when Xander wanted to go save Buffy later, expressing how he'd die for the Slayer, but not for her. She discovered a book that mentioned the baddie they were currently dealing with - the Judge - in the library, but Willow caught them kissing, and their secret was blown. After learning about how Angel had turned into Angelus - his evil alter-ego, she decided this was the lowest things had ever gotten for them, and felt pretty hopeless about things. Still, she snuck onto a military installation with Xander to steal a rocket launcher, which Buffy used to take out the Judge. She did bitch, however, when she wound up on 'picking up the Judge's body parts' duty.
Cordelia grew increasingly jealous of how close Xander was to Buffy and Willow, and was attacked twice by a werewolf soon after. She and Willow complained to each other about men, as Will dealt with her own issues over boyfriend Oz (who... turned out to be the werewolf). Frustrated, Cordelia tried to catch up with her old gang, and they dissed her on account of her connection to Xander, which left her floored. He proceeded to give her a heart locket for Valentine's Day, which she was clearly moved by, but she told him she wanted to break up because they didn't fit together. He was hurt and indignant, and she was really upset about it, but tried to avoid him at school. He demanded the necklace back at school, and she pretended it was in her locker, rather than admit that she'd actually been wearing it. Her friends quickly accepted her back into the fold after she'd dropped Xander, but when he botched a spell intended to make her fall for him again, she wound up confronted by all the other girls in her school about breaking his heart. They went as far as to physically attack her, and Xander rescued her, barricading her in Buffy's room. She yelled at Xander for using the black arts to make girls like him, but was actually moved when she learned that the spell had been intended to get her back. The spell was finally broken, and afterwards, Cordelia stood up to her former best friend, Harmony, calling her a sheep and realizing she didn't need her approval. She went back to Xander, freaked out that she'd just committed social suicide.
Meanwhile, Angelus was still out there, and Cordelia nailed crosses in her car since she'd invited him to ride in there once. She kept one on her person as well, which she brandished against him when he showed up to fight Buffy. The Slayer got sick, and she visited her at the hospital, pointing out that Buffy's paranoia about a monster in the building was probably just her conjuring up a monster to fight that represented the friend she'd had that had died in a hospital when she was younger. Still, she helped investigate, flirting with a security guard to get information about the Doctor (and being happy when Xander was a little jealous about it), and being worried about Xander when he went to stay sentry at the hospital alone. She helped Giles research the monster and was enthusiastic about calling and informing Buffy that they'd found it, despite complaining about being 'dragged into' all this stuff.
When the Sadie Hawkins dance came up, Cordelia organized a boycott of it, horrified that the girls were expected to pay for everything. More strange things went down with snakes appearing all over the cafeteria, and she helped the Scoobies to perform an exorcism on the school. Later, more deaths cropped up surrounding the swim team, and she lost all will to cheerlead when she realized it might affect their bid to win state championship. She helped research sea demons as Xander went undercover on the swim team, making her not-so-secretly proud to be dating an athlete. When she found out the swim team were all monsters, she reacted by being worried that not only would she being dating an unpopular guy now, but also a monster. However, when she really thought Xander had transformed, she showed another side of herself, telling him she still cared about him and still wanted to date him, that she would understand if he wanted to be with someone else, and offering to do anything to help him - a real break from her usual superficial exterior.
As things drew to a head, she supported Xander's idea about killing Angelus, and supported him when Willow got hurt. She wished she could do more for the final showdown, but remained in a supportive role as they sought to take him down.
Cordelia didn't see Xander during the following summer, going to Las Palmas with her family, which she considered a nightmare, because of the 'organized fun' and cockroaches. She was nervous about seeing him again and asked Willow if he'd met anyone over the summer, also expressing insecurity that he'd forgotten about her. When they saw each other, they both attempted to play it too cool, and she got really annoyed by his lack of enthusiasm. Still, she agreed to go along as bait when the Scoobies needed her (complaining all the while that this was always her role), and said she was doing it for Buffy's' sake, not Xander's. She got in an argument with him, admitting she didn't believe he'd been faithful, but in classic form, their fighting just led them to making out again. She went with Buffy and the others to show Giles that the Slayer had returned from her self-imposed exile, and even stood up for Buffy about running away, understanding why she'd done it. And then a bunch of zombies attacked a party they were at, and she had to fend them off with a pool stick.
A new Slayer named Faith arrived in town, but Cordelia was notably unimpressed by her, and again, got jealous of the attention she drew from Xander. Homecoming approached, and she got incredibly intense about being crowned Queen, going all out in her campaigning against the competition. A miffed Buffy said she wasn't going to vote for her, after Cordelia forgot to tell her about yearbook pictures, but Cordelia defended herself by saying she was under a lot of pressure, and that being Queen was about being part of the school and having actual friends, something Buffy couldn't understand. Buffy responded by electing to run against her, and an intense rivalry began. When things got too heated, their friends rented them a limo and left them alone in it, telling them to work it out, but a case of mistaken identity led some vampires to think she was Faith, and her and Buffy wound up hunted. Facing the possibility of death, she realized she actually loved Xander, and Buffy got her angry enough that she would stop being afraid. It worked, because she managed to literally intimidate a vampire into running off with a monologue about how scary she was, and her and Buffy made it back just in time - to both find out they'd lost the contest.
The parents of Sunnydale all reverted to acting like teens after consuming some magical band candy, which was fine with Cordelia until her mom started borrowing her lycra pants. She was the first to suspect Buffy might be hiding a new boyfriend from them, but learned with the others that she'd been secretly seeing Angel, who had somehow returned from Hell. They staged an intervention for her, during which Cordelia expressed that she was worried about her own life, since last time, Angelus had targeted Buffy's friends. She told Buffy that she didn't trust her, even if Xander did.
The SATs rolled around, and Cordelia did great on them. She agreed to go on a double date with Oz and Willow, but when their significant others went missing, teamed up with Oz to look for them, and then stumbled upon Willow and Xander making out. Cordelia was almost sick with horror, and ran off, falling through an old staircase and getting stabbed through with a rusted piece of rebar that luckily didn't puncture anything, but sent her to the hospital for awhile. When Xander came to apologize to her in the hospital, she told him to stay away from her, dissolving into tears after he left. Extremely affected, Cordelia ignored all of Xander's calls, burning every picture she had of him, and returning to school the next day with an extreme vamp makeover. Harmony pretended to welcome her back now that she'd 'broken up with' Xander, but she turned out to be just poking fun at her, as she recommended another nerd for Cordelia to date next. The former Queen Bee was clearly very hurt and didn't even have a comeback for once - and even seemed to feel bad for the nerd in question, too. Still, she pretended to be kissing another guy when Xander was looking to make him jealous. She wound up spilling out her problems to new girl Anya, claiming she was past him and ready to live her life. When she gets attacked by a vampire at the Bronze and winds up in the trash, she starts blaming Buffy for all her problems, and accepts a 'good luck charm' from Anya, wishing that Buffy Summers had never come to Sunnydale. Anya, actually a vengeance demon, granted her wish, sucking Cordelia into a world where her wish was real, but Cordelia quickly realized how bad things would have been without Buffy. Either way, the wish was later reversed, and Cordelia never even remembered that it had happened.
She maintained her distance from the Scoobies for awhile, making snide remarks at Xander where she could, and spending her winter break in Aspen, skiing. When the mothers of Sunnydale started a campaign against witchcraft, Cordelia sided with them, telling Buffy that hanging out with witches who killed kids would end badly for her. However, when her mom confiscated all her black clothes and scented candles, she decided things had gone too far, and went to Giles for help. She assisted him in making a spell and saving Willow and Buffy (and putting out the fire from where they were almost burned at the stake). When Buffy proceeded to lose her powers for a short time, Cordelia stood up to a guy who got handsy and physically beat him herself when Buffy couldn't help. When she walked in on Buffy crying in the library, she was concerned that the world was ending again, but agreed to give Buffy a ride home without any further questions.
Faith's new Watcher, Wesley Wyndam-Pryce arrived, and he and Cordelia developed a mutual crush on each other, complicated by his age, although she was at least eighteen by then. She would come by the library dressed to the nines with the flimsiest of excuses in hopes of seeing him, and on one such occasion, stumbled across a vampire doppelganger of Willow who had managed to get to their world from the Wish!verse that she'd earlier created. She kept her locked in the book cage long enough to lecture her about the ethics of boyfriend stealing, claiming she'd only been attracted to Xander because they kept winding up in life or death situations. When Vampire Willow apologized, she let her out, and was attacked, although Wesley managed to save her. Unconcerned about how Willow was apparently a vampire now, she asked him if he wanted to go out that night. She continued to pop around to see Wesley, and it led her to get in on their research into the town's shady mayor.
When Buffy gained the power to read minds for awhile, it was revealed that Cordelia says literally everything that she thinks. She was not overly concerned when they learned about a potential school shooter (in fact, she just kept thinking about how cold she was), but she agreed to go around and try to figure out who it was going to be, bluntly asking Mr. Beech if he planned to kill a ton of people the next day. She was the one to discover classmate Jonathan's incriminating letter in the newspaper's office, but complained that he wasn't writing in to praise the cheerleaders. In the end, however, it was the school cook who was trying to poison them all.
Xander caught her looking at fancy clothes in a downtown boutique, and she admitted that she got into USC, Colorado State, Duke, and Colombia. What she didn't tell him was that she was actually working as a shopgirl there, having lost her home since her dad had been arrested for tax fraud. All her possessions had been seized, and she couldn't afford to go to any of the colleges she'd been accepted to. She tried to warn the others from shopping for their prom dresses at the store she was working at, afraid they'd realize the truth, but when the store was attacked by a hellhound, Xander learned the truth. He lied for her and paid for the dress she was working towards buying, and she showed up looking gorgeous at the prom, where she thanked Xander, and danced with Wesley.
When Wesley was ready to leave the country after things went to hell with Faith, he called Cordelia first to tell her, and she rushed to confront Giles about it, learning that Buffy had quit the Watcher's Council. She blamed Buffy for always thinking about herself, and not about how this would affect Wesley or Cordelia. With Faith in a coma, they now had to deal with the impending threat of the Mayor's planned 'ascension'. She shared a moment with Wesley where he admitted that he had no reason to think he was needed or wanted here, and they shared the world's most awkward kiss, realizing that they actually had zero chemistry. A plan was set into place, and graduation proceeded - with the entire graduating class of 1999 armed and trained to fight the Mayor when he turned into a giant demon snake.
Following graduation, Cordelia moved to Los Angeles to pursue a dream of acting, where she ran into Angel at a party. While she told him that she was living in Malibu at a condo on a beach, she excuses herself before he can ask too many questions, and leaves the party to go back to her crappy apartment, where she wears old sweats, has only one dress to her name and a largely empty closet, and has to eat cookies she stole from the party for dinner. It's clear that she's having a hard time getting any acting gigs, and when she gets invited to meet with a famous investor, she admits to him that she lost everything and that LA isn't what she expected. He promises to give her what she needs and she starts crying, before realizing that he doesn't have any mirrors and has to actually be a vampire. Saved by Angel, she repays the favor by helping to rescue and patch Angel up when he gets himself in trouble. Worried that the vamp is going to come after her, she invites herself to hang around and has the idea of starting up a detective agency for Angel to help people.
Excited about this new project (and the potential cash it could bring), she orders them calling cards, just as Angel's new pal Doyle has a vision sent to him by the Powers that Be about a creature. They follow the vision to a nearby club and Cordelia starts networking immediately, handing out cards and asking Doyle about these visions of his. She admits that if she were given such a gift, she'd want to return it, and dismisses his visions as lame and vague. She fills Doyle in on how Angel can't experience a moment of pure happiness or else he turns homicidal, and takes notes on what to research in regards to the demon they might be looking for. Doyle and Angel come to her apartment, and Doyle says it's refreshing to see a woman live as messy as she does, and shows that she lives in the moment. Together, they track down and stop a demon parasite. She starts getting into playing the role of secretary, giddy about printing their first invoice, even as she chastises Doyle about his drinking habits. Spike shows up, however, and she hides at Doyle's place, telling him about Spike's past and worrying when Angel doesn't call. She pulls a crossbow on Spike when he shows up, and he tells them that he'll trade them Angel for the ring that allows him to walk in the daylight. She and Doyle rip the apartment up looking for the ring, and find it in the sewers. They get help from Oz to rescue Angel when Spike inevitably reneges on the deal, and then help him stop the torture demon that Spike brought along from capturing some children. They watch Angel have his first moment in the sun in hundreds of years, before he decides to give the ring up.
The high of employment fizzles quickly when bills start pouring in, and while Cordelia makes the office more homey, she also becomes hell-bent on establishing a paid clientele. While helping a woman with a creepy stalker who can literally detach his body parts, she wonders why anyone ever dates anybody, clearly much more cynical about romance than she ever used to be. Their first real check renews her exuberance however, and she and Doyle go out to celebrate. Things are still difficult for her in the acting world, as she can't even land a trash bag commercial, and she avoids answering calls from her girlfriends back in Sunnydale, because she doesn't want to have to avoid questions about how sucky her life is now. When her apartment becomes infested with cockroaches, she gives up and brings her stuff to Angel's, moving in. Doyle takes her apartment shopping and uses one of his shady contacts to find her a place that's perfect - except for the fact that it's haunted. Cordelia enters into an intense battle of wills with the resident ghost, stubbornly refusing to give up her rent-controlled dream apartment. She admits to Angel that the apartment symbolizes her getting back everything that had been taken from her as a punishment for the person she'd been in High School, and she admits that she considers her struggle against poverty as her own path to redemption. In a confrontation with the ghost herself, the old woman tells Cordelia that no one cares about her and that she doesn't deserve anything, that she's worthless and everyone will be glad when she's dead, leaving her to hang in the living room. Angel and Doyle burst in to save her but she's clearly freaked out by the ghost's assessment, crying out that she knows her, and that no one can stop her. Angel tried to get through to her by reminding her that she was Cordelia Chase, but it wasn't until the ghost called her a bitch that she pulled out of her self-pity, and realized that being a bitch was part of who she was, and one of her strengths. It was revealed that the ghost had actually killed her son and buried him in the wall, and with her exorcised, her son's ghost (Dennis) remained to haunt the apartment, but remained grateful and friendly to Cordelia. The experience left Cordelia strong enough to call her friend back in Sunnydale and lie to her about how things were going for her.
Falling into a pattern of investigating and stopping demons, Cordelia became annoyed that Angel wasn't grateful enough for their assistance, which she later regretted when a cursed talking stick rendered all his emotions on the surface. In the end, she told him that she wanted him to toughen up again to how he used to be. She tried going on a date with a rich investment guy, only to realize that she was bored by him for not being brave or interesting, now that she was used to running with Angel and Doyle. When her date ran off when she was attacked by a vampire, Doyle jumped in to save her, and she was genuinely surprised by his courage and grateful. Taking notice of his substance, she talked to Angel about it, although she swore she'd have to kill herself now because she'd promised never to date another fixer-upper after Xander. She was about to ask him out when Doyle's... ex-wife, Harry, walked in, complicating things. She was really nice to Cordelia and despite herself, she grew to like her, but had to step in and help save Doyle when Harry's new husband almost ritually sacrificed him at his bachelor party. She realized Doyle was still hung up on Harry and went out of her way to cheer him up (albeit in her usual insensitive but charming manner), assuring him that nice guys didn't always finish last.
After Angel vanished to Sunnydale for three days, following a vision Doyle had about Buffy, Cordelia was worried about the effect seeing his old flame had had on him. She was surprised to find out Angel avoided Buffy while he was there, but then Buffy showed up on their doorstep and they had an awkward reunion, where she hastily introduced Doyle and then dragged him out of there. Shortly thereafter, she roped Doyle into trying to make a video ad for Angel Investigations with her about "The Dark Avenger" Angel, and told Doyle they shouldn't keep secrets from each other, unaware that he was hiding his own half-demonic origins from her. Just as he was about to open up, he had a vision, and in the process of helping get other half-brachen demons out of the country on a ship, one of them told her the truth about Doyle. Upon seeing him again she slapped him for not trusting her and assuming she'd be superficial enough to care, then demanded he ask her out for dinner already. However, they never got that dinner, because Doyle sacrificed himself to save the half-brachens from a bomb on board, but not before kissing Cordelia and passing his visions to her.
Distraught over Doyle's death, Cordelia searched for any tangible evidence that he'd left behind of existing, while telling Angel that she refused to let him shut her out, and assuring him she wasn't going anywhere. In the middle of an audition, she broke down crying over Doyle, before experiencing her first vision and realizing what Doyle had done. Upon returning to the office she kissed both Angel and the empath demon, Barney, who were there, hoping she could get rid of them that way, outraged that she had to carry them now, as she believed she had nothing to atone for. She grew angry at Barney when he read her emotions and said she'd lost someone recently, but willingly sketched what she saw for Angel to go track down. She also tried to pass her visions off to Wesley when he showed up before she even realized who it was, and filled him in after Angel refused to let Wesley help, since he clearly didn't want to lose him the way he'd lost Doyle. She declared that she'd never forgive Doyle for doing this to her, but Barney pointed out that he'd trusted her with an enormous responsibility and gave her a rare and important gift that she was worthy of. However, Barney also turned out to be evil, and then pointed out all her worst traits to her: that she was self-absorbed, delusional, full of regret, didn't like to hear the truth, and knew in her heart she was a terrible actress. Worst of all, he told her that she felt like she'd let Doyle die, that maybe if she'd been nicer to him, and opened her heart, she could have saved him, but instead she'd only cared about herself. He wound up capturing her and putting her on auction to those who wanted 'seer's eyes' (and was offended that the bidding only started at 2000 dollars). Angel saved her with Wesley's help, and she framed her drawing of the first vision as a reminder of what Doyle had left her.
She started worrying about Angel when he looked half-dead, but when Wesley found an article about a victim who had a Christian cross carved in their left cheek - a calling card of Angelus - she told him to leave, and insisted Angel was good, and her friend, and refused to turn on him. However, when Angel walked in and said they were right, she was instantly ready to kill him. In reality, Angel worried he was killing people in his sleep, but it turned out to be another vampire Angel had sired, named Penn, who she helped him track. Afterwards, she reassured him that it didn't matter that Angelus was still inside of him, because it wasn't the only thing that was. She also promised to murder him if he ever did go dark side.
Cordelia meets a guy who turns out to be too good to be true, named Wilson Christopher, a charming man who she sleeps with, only to wake up extremely pregnant the next day, with the spawn of a haxil beast. Wesley and Angel came to find her, where she was crying, trying to wake up from this nightmare, and Angel went to track down the truth of what had happened, while Wesley supported her through her sudden pregnancy. When the Doctor withdrew fluid, it turned out to be acidic, and she grew increasingly, dangerously protective of her seven growing children, until she attacked Wesley and went to meet with the other mothers and give birth. Angel killed the haxil beast with liquid nitrogen before she could, and the babies withered and died within her, breaking the spell, and leaving Cordelia free to smash the haxil beast's frozen head. Two days later, she returned to work, dismissing Wesley and Angel's concerns about how she'd be doing after her ordeal and telling them that she'd learned she could trust them both with her life.
They proceeded to fall into a pattern of Cordelia having visions, working with Wesley to research demons, and assisting Angel in stopping evil, turning into quite the team. At one point, Angel accidentally called Wesley Doyle, and Cordelia called him out on it, letting him know that he could open up to her, and he admitted the guilt he felt over his death. At one point, Angel wound up saving the life of a famous actress, who became enamored with him, and Cordelia was star-struck, hoping that hanging around her would finally be her ticket to fame herself. However, her over-enthusiasm led her to answer one too many questions that Rebecca had - including telling her how Angel could make her into a vampire, and when the actress got Angel hopped up on doximine, Angelus came out to play. Confronting the vampire, he said that sitting through her acting was worse than hell and told her everyone was laughing at her, but she countered him by admitting she prepared for this possibility and thought about it literally every day, bluffing about having holy water in her thermos so that she can distract him long enough for Wesley to shove him down an elevator shaft. They chained him to the bed, and while she said she was too big of a person to let this get in the way of their friendship, she also notably was in no hurry to untie him.
While Cordelia was working on getting a new client, Faith showed up in LA and tried to kill Angel, hired by the evil lawyers, Wolfram and Hart. She was ready to go into hiding, but helped looked for assaults and killings so that Angel could track her down anyway. Dennis tried to warn Cordelia out of her apartment, but she got cornered inside with Wesley by the psycho Slayer, who elbowed her in the face. She woke up crying when Angel showed up, feeling incredibly helpless, as Wesley had been taken and was being tortured by his former charge. Cordy was subsequently outraged when Angel brought Faith home in a bid to redeem her, and took herself a paid vacation while she was around because she could not trust her.
The crew met eccentric millionaire David Nabbit, a nerdy guy who she briefly considered prostituting herself to in order to wind up rich - only to realize she couldn't go through with it. After Wolfram and Hart got a murderess acquitted, she tried to talk Angel out of breaking into Wolfram and Hart, worried that he was going to get caught. Instead, he came out with some encrypted files that she helped break, with the tech support of Willow by phone. They gained access to a prophecy that Wesley originally interpreted to mean that Angel was going to die, which didn't particularly worry her, because he faced death every day of his life. However, a vocah demon infected her and left her succumbing to an endless stream of visions, where she experienced so much pain that she was put in a neuropsychiatric unit in the hospital, where she became non-responsive after screaming for hours, unable to even be sedated. After Wesley and Angel magically restored her, she awoke, telling Angel that she'd seen and felt so much pain, that they needed to help everyone. Ready to turn over a new, more selfless leaf, she couldn't help but maintain aspects of her old personality - but told Wesley and Angel that they were her family. Wesley realized he'd misinterpreted the Prophecy: it meant Angel was going to turn human, not die.
Their office having burned down while she was out of it, they started working out of her apartment, using a white board to keep track of leads. Cordelia had a vision about a prio motu demon, which led them to a demon bar called Caritas, which served as a sanctuary for the supernatural, where the bar's Host, Lorne, could read people's souls if they sang karaoke. Angel accidentally wound up killing the demon, that he was supposed to keep alive, showing that it was possible for them to misinterpret the vague visions sent. She encourages Angel not to be too hard on himself about it, and promises to stay with him through the fight. He throws out their whiteboard, done with keeping score on the road to redemption. He asked them to look into cases revolving around the Hyperion hotel, which he had history with, and helped him exorcise a paranoia demon that was haunting the place. Even though she said the place gave her the heebie jeebies, Angel decided it was the perfect place for their new headquarters.
They take to cleaning up the new place and get some assistance from David Nabbit at financing it. When she has a vision of Charles Gunn being in trouble, she makes herself 'his protector' and winds up going on an adventure with him to reclaim Angel's stolen car, fighting some vampires and being way out of her element in the hood. While Gunn feels like she's high maintenance, she still refuses to back down from helping him out and later argues with Wesley that they should offer to pay Gunn for his help. She notices when Angel starts acting off his game, slightly (and sniffing her hair), but it's not until Angel starts talking about seeing Darla, his dead sire, again that she tells him that he's gone crazy. She and Wesley prepare a tranquilizer gun just in case, but when the police show up to say that Angel has killed the husband of the woman he thinks is really Darla, they still stand their ground and refuse to say anything to incriminate him. Gunn realizes that Angel could only have gotten in that house if the real owners were dead. She's relieved when Angel goes to visit a swami, but he turns out to be a fake, and while he's gone Wesley has to pretend to be Angel, leading Cordelia to get jealous when it winds up landing him a rich and famous girlfriend. Angel winds up bringing Darla home to help her since she's also dealing with a human soul now, and she gets viscerally upset when Angel implies that he's going through his struggle with a soul without any support. She also quickly corrects Darla when she calls him Angelus.
Cordelia complains about Angel's constant Darla-brooding after she leaves, but is cheered up by attending a premiere party with Wesley and Virginia, until he spills cocktail sauce on her dress. They're enthusiastic to learn that Angel is actually on a case again and volunteer to research for him, which leads them into contact with the Shroud of Rahmon, which makes people go crazy upon contact with it. While its effects on her are relatively harmless, Angel winds up biting the policewoman, Kate, and she and Wesley worry that their good intentions may have accidentally reawakened Angel's bloodlust. They grow increasingly worried about him together, and when Gunn finds her location, they refuse to enable him by going with. Upon their return, she threatens Darla, feeling that she doesn't deserve any of their sympathy.
Darla wound up turned back into a vampire by Drusilla, who Angelus had previously sired, thanks to the interference of Wolfram and Hart. Upon learning about this, Cordelia was freaked out about Dru being in town, calling her a loony, and tried to help Angel track down the place where they could be bringing Darla back. She was horrified to learn that Angel had locked up a room full of Wolfram and Hart lawyers with a newly revamped Darla and Drusilla, but when she questioned him on it with Wesley and Gunn, he proceeded to fire all three of them.
Cordelia was left bereft: angry, frustrated, and disappointed that Angel would turn them all away like that. She wound up at Caritas hoping for answers, and ended up doing drunken karaoke with Gunn and Wes, only to receive a vision about a woman in trouble. The three took care of the problem on their own, and decided to continue on with the agency, without Angel. She grew increasingly annoyed at the boys spending all their time in her apartment, and started looking for an office for their new agency, while they spent a lot of time bickering over what to call themselves now. Wesley's girlfriend, Virginia, brought them food, champagne, and their first real case. They worked another to remove a demon eye from the back of a young girl's forehead. However, Gunn also took a case to deal with some teens being attacked by the police, and Cordelia tried to talk him out of provoking the police into beating him up to just to prove that they're wiling to do it. When he went through with it anyway, she and Wesley went to save him, but Wesley wound up shot. She demanded they take him to a hospital, where Angel showed up. She confronted him about how it took a gunshot wound to make him give a crap and told him to stay away, since he'd walked away from them.
Angel later showed up at their agency to take a book from them, and while Cordelia tried to stop him, Wesley told her to just let him have it. His aggressive demeanor drove her to tell him she didn't know who he was anymore, and later to rant that it would be better if Angel were just to go evil so that they could at least stake him. She admitted that she had nowhere to go on a Friday night because she no longer had any other friends - the mission had become her entire life.
After they helped the little girl remove the eye from the back of her head, other demons of that type arrived and infected Cordelia with one. Wesley told Angel that Cordelia had become increasingly solitary over the last few months because of her visions, which she couldn't turn away from, and explained that she was relentlessly compelled to do something about them. Angel saved her from the demons, but she told him he had really hurt her feelings by walking out on them. Still, he returned to Angel Investigations, and asked if he could work for them, feeling he could still do some good there, and they reluctantly agreed.
While Cordelia admitted to Angel that she was excited for them all to save more people, she also dismissed any notions he had about things being okay between them by telling him that they weren't friends anymore. Around the same time, her old best friend, Harmony Kendall, arrived in town, and Cordelia invited her to stay with her, unaware that she had become an evil vampire since they graduated. Misreading all the signals, Cordelia talked to Willow about how Harmony was clearly gay for her, but Willow corrected her on matter, and warned her not to trust Harmony. Still, Cordelia made the others give Harmony a chance, and the vampire told them she wanted to work with the good guys. When Angel argued the point, claiming she would turn on them because she didn't have a soul, Cordelia brought up that he'd betrayed all of them when he did have one, demonstrating that she was still hurt and angry about what he'd done. Angel proceeded to buy her a bunch of new clothes to get back in her good graces, which surprised Wesley by working like a charm.
She got another vision about a man stabbing himself in the eye with a kitchen knife. They track down the identity of the man, who has disappeared, along with his family, and meeting with a dead end, go to Caritas. They find Lindsey there, the lawyer from Wolfram and Hart, and Cordelia is impressed by his singing - although the gang is less impressed when Lorne tells them that Angel & Lindsey will have to solve this case together. They track the place that Lindsey got a new hand transplant from so that Angel can stop it, while Cordelia begins showing signs of suffering from the visions that have been given to her. She admits to the others when pressed that they're starting to get more painful, but accepts this as the price for them.
Cordelia finally won a role that seems to have some weight to it, in a national commercial, and the team went out to celebrate, spending some happy time together for the first time in awhile. Angel came to visit her on the set, where he got to witness the director being demeaning and sexist towards her, behavior he couldn't stomach in silence. While initially, Cordelia was angry at Angel for ruining her shot, but then she admits that even she was embarrassed for herself. Lorne showed up to ask them to help investigate a demon who had mysteriously portalled into Caritas, and Cordelia received a vision of a woman - Fred - in a library with a portal opening behind her. They discovered that Fred had gone missing five years prior, and found a book, that when Cordelia read out of, opened a portal to Pylea, through which Lorne's cousin emerged. They learned a little about Lorne's history, and after getting Lorne's cousin's help in tracking down the demon from earlier, they send him back through the portal by reading from the book again. However, when Cordelia opens the portal, she winds up going through it....
And into Wonderland.
Abilities/Special Powers:
• Visions from the Powers That Be
Cordelia was passed the ability to receive visions from Allen Francis Doyle before his death. The visions are brief, disjointed images sent from higher powers, of violent confrontations with the supernatural world. While having one, Cordelia experiences the pain of the victim, and is left with a splitting migraine afterwards. They are intended to help Angel in his quest for redemption, and usually give the gang a very short time to react and try to save the victim.
• Adoptive Muscle Memory
Cordelia has demonstrated an ability to mimic movements perfectly after observing them only once, something she's used to her advantage both in cheerleading and in combat training.
Third-Person Sample:
"How the mighty have fallen," Cordelia murmured to herself as she stood on the threshold of her new apartment, surveying the damage. And by 'damage', she meant inherited state of disrepair with which the only place in town willing to grant her a lease on less than fifty dollars down had come outfitted. When she'd been through here with the landlord, she'd tried to see the bright side, to focus on the fact that this was an apartment in LA and that in itself was, well, if not living the dream, at least more dream-adjacent than being back in Sunnydale. However, alone now with her unpainted walls, single suitcase full of possessions, and the overhead light fritzing out even now, her heart felt like it literally couldn't sink any lower without crashing through the likely far too thin floorboards.
Reluctantly, she took a few steps inside, lifting her too-light luggage onto the bed, and trying hard to ignore the fact that she'd never so much as traveled with less than three carry-ons before, whereas now everything that she could consider her own was nestled snugly into one duffel from Goodwill. She could feel something creeping in on her, a growing, gnawing dread in her stomach as she let the silence descend around her: that this was going to be it for her, forever. That maybe this was even all she deserved.
She unzipped the bag with emphasis, moving to take action - any action - rather than to let the doubts start to gain ground. Momentum, that was all she needed, and moving here in the first place had been the initiating act in getting that particular ball rolling. She pulled out her single cocktail dress, moved to the closet to quickly get a hangar so that it could breathe again. She noted with a frown that it was already rumpled from transporting it without a proper garment bag, and realized that her first instinct was Oh, I'll have to have Maria iron--
Except there was no Maria. There was no ironing board. If she wanted something done, she was going to have to do it herself, now.
Rather than allow that to plant another grain of self-pity, she rolled her eyes and mumbled, "How hard can it be, really?", running her hands firmly across the dress in brisk motions, as if she could will the wrinkles out with pure determination.
First-Person Sample:
[ network | voice ]
[ now that cordelia's all settled in, she has some pressing questions for you all. you're welcome. ] Soooo what's the sitch with demons, vampires, and other bump in the nights around here? I mean... assuming that you believe in that kind of thing. Not saying that I do. Just, you know, theoretically, if someone did, would it be wise to carry a crossbow around in your Prada bag at night? Asking for a friend.
Re-App Third-Person Sample:
Re-App First-Person Sample:
[ network | video ]
[ cordelia fixes the screen with a dazzling, if not slightly forced, smile, reaching up to check her hair once before she dives in, clasping her hands together in front of herself ]
Alright, so. I'm convinced that Angel's usual word of mouth-y PR campaign is as effective as always - as in, not very - so we're going to try this the old fashioned way: commercials!
Are you facing a problem that can't be solved by making a wish upon your endless walk-in closet? Maybe a mystery or two, of the super or paranormal variety, beyond the apparently eternal questions of why are we here and how the heck do we get home?
Well, lucky for you, we have just what you need, right here on the fifth floor. [ she gestures slightly with a hand that gets caught in the bottom of the frame to whoever is filming, shooting them a slightly annoyed look until they shift the camera to show the door of Angel Investigations, which she proceeds to point out a la Vanna White ] Angel Investigations: we help the helpless. For a very reasonable nominal fee.
DW username:
dancinpenguinsE-Mail:
IM: thegreatmuldini
Plurk:
Other Characters: None.
Character Name: Cordelia Chase
Series: Buffy the Vampire Slayer & Angel the Series
Timeline: The end of Angel 2x19 "Belonging" after going through the portal
Canon Resource Link: Buffy wiki
Character History:
When we first meet Cordelia Chase, she rules Sunnydale High School as 'Queen C' - the most popular girl in school, with a clique of followers known as the Cordettes. She's actually the first character to befriend new girl Buffy Summers, recognizing her as potentially cool. She shares her book in class with Buffy and introduces herself, helping her to find the library, and giving her a brief pop quiz to test her coolness factor (Vamp nail polish: over, James Spader: hot, John Tesh: the devil). While she invites Buffy to hang out with her at the local hot spot, the Bronze, Buffy becomes a little uncertain about accepting her friendship after Cordelia is visibly a bitch to Willow Rosenberg in front of her, dismissing her as a loser and warning Buffy to stay away from her kind. The gossip queen becomes freaked out by Buffy's morbid fascination with a student who dies at their school, and when Buffy accidentally winds up pulling a stake on her at the Bronze, she decides that the new girl is crazy, and quickly spreads the news to everyone breathing (on her cellphone, no less, which was a clear indicator of just how rich her family was when a high schooler had one in 1996).
When one of her 'loser' classmates, Jesse, was turned into a vampire, Cordelia was actually stunned enough by his new look and attitude to agree to dance with him at the Bronze. However, when the club was attacked by vampires, she was nearly eaten by one of them, when the vampire Darla volunteered her as fodder, and she only lived because Buffy Summers saved her life. She had a second brush with death not long after, when Jesse himself tried to eat her, and that time she was saved by one of the other losers she'd long dismissed - Xander Harris. The shock and trauma of the vampire attack was too much for Cordelia, and her mind blanked out most of the memory - except for the part about how that weirdo Buffy Summers apparently knew the attackers, who she figured were some kind of gang members.
Cordelia set her sights on making the varsity cheerleading squad, wanting to fulfill her dream of being adored by everyone in the school, but when a fellow student, Amy, potentially messed up her try-out, she cornered her and threatened her in the locker room. Little did she know that Amy was actually body-swapped with her insane mother, a witch who proceeded to voodoo curse Cordelia into going blind during driver's training, landing her in a car crash. The spell eventually wore off after Buffy dealt with the witch, and Cordelia made the squad after all.
Cordy proceeded to get increasingly annoyed with Buffy Summers' presence - particularly because she kept drawing the attention of other hot guys who Cordelia was interested in, not the least of which was mysterious "salty goodness", Angel. She participated in the school talent show, doing a terrible rendition of "The Greatest Love of All", but became upset when another student turned up dead - because it could have been her, not because of any sympathy for the actual dead. She was characteristically a diva about the talent show, trying to demand that Giles rearrange the order of acts so that other songs don't 'ruin the mood' of hers, but on the actual night, suffered from stage fright about being judged before she goes on.
Her strange high school experience continued - tarantulas burst out of a classmate's textbook during class, she found herself awaking with violently terrible hair as her worst nightmare came true - but she remained ignorant of exactly what was going on in her town. She campaigned enthusiastically for the title of May Queen, handing out chocolates and having a bunch of girls help tailor her a dress. However, when a series of accidents kept surrounding her campaign, she turned to Buffy for help, having noticed that she was really strong and had a lot of weapons ( and mistakenly assuming she was in a gang ). She refused to drop out, because it would mean that the person working against her had won, and defended her obsession with winning as important, claiming that popularity was a responsibility, and that it was preferable to being alone. Her stalker turned out to be a crazed invisible girl named Marcie, who kidnapped and tied her up on stage with Buffy, threatening to scar up the face she was so vain about and make it truly 'memorable'. Buffy saved her life, and this time, Cordelia displayed real gratitude... at least until they were in public, where she swore she'd never hang out with their social leper colony.
She dated a guy named Kevin until he was murdered by vampires, and when the Hellmouth itself exploded in the library while it was under attack by said creatures of the night, she was there and saw everything, learning the truth about Sunnydale, and about how Buffy Summers was the Slayer. She took the news entirely in stride, none of it dampening her excitement for the upcoming dance at the Bronze.
She spent the following summer in Tuscany, which she complained about upon returning (her parents had promised her they'd take her to St. Croix, and she felt she'd had to suffer with no beaches). Upon running back into the Scoobies, she eagerly asked if they'd fought any demons over the summer. They tried to write it off, but she called them out on how she'd seen everything, and promised she wasn't going to tell anyone - after all, it would involve admitting hanging out with them. She opened up about being scared by it, and told them she hadn't wanted to think about it much, but when Buffy proceeded to insult her, her feelings were clearly hurt and she shut down. She would later be the only one willing to call out Buffy for acting like a bitch in toying with Xander at the Bronze, telling her that even though they weren't friends, she was going to give her some advice - to get over it. She was then kidnapped by a vampire trying to resurrect the Master, since she was present during his death, and Buffy saved her again, although she was more concerned with how she was supposed to get the stains out of her clothes than thanking her.
Annoyed about mandatory participation in the science fair, Cordelia turned to brainy Willow for help, admitting she didn't want to ask Chris Epps for help because it would dredge up emotions about his dead brother, Daryl, for her (a senior all-state runningback she'd been into, who had died rock-climbing a few years before). However, she found herself targeted by Chris, who had brought his brother back from the dead and was building him a Franken-bride - one he intended to use Cordelia's head for. When Xander saved her, she showed real gratitude, calling him brave and heroic, and offering to do anything she could to pay him back, but he blew her off for Willow.
After that, she took a slightly more pro-active stance with the Scoobies, even helping to sharpen stakes for a showdown Buffy was going to have with new vampire player in town, Spike. When Spike attacked the school, she survived by hiding in a broom closet with Willow, fervently praying to God that if he saved her, she wouldn't be mean to anyone else ever again... unless they deserved it.
Following her brief excitement about getting a hot Swedish exchange student, Cordelia fixed her sights on Richard, a local college boy, who invited her to bring Buffy to a frat party. Eager to impress him, she insisted Buffy go, and coached her on how not to embarrass her, but it turned out that Richard's frat just wanted to sacrifice them both in a dark ritual. Saved by Buffy again, Cordy was happy to credit Angel and inform Buffy that she hated her and her friends.
Annoyed with being brushed off by Devon, a singer she was dating, she fixed her sights back on Angel, flirting with him while he was waiting for Buffy, and even drawing a rare smile from him, and pressing Buffy for more details about his life. The Slayer told her that Angel was a vampire, but she assumed that Buffy was just being jealous and trying to scare her off. When most people in town began morphing into the Halloween costumes they were wearing, Cordelia remained unaffected, since she'd bought her costume elsewhere, and stuck close to Xander and Angel to survive. She was notably impressed with Xander's soldier-costume alter-ego, and honestly disappointed when Angel was fixated on Buffy in the aftermath, seeming to finally accept that she wasn't going to draw his attention away from her.
On career day, she received 'personal shopper' or 'motivational speaker' as her likely future, and reluctantly agreed to go with Xander to look for Buffy since she was the only one with a car. They wound up running afoul of a creepy guy who was composed of bugs, and afterwards, got in a heated argument about going to help Buffy, that exploded into "I hate you"s, and then makeouts. She tried to avoid Xander afterwards, but when he confronted her about how awful it was, they wound up making out again. They began a strictly physical relationship that didn't lessen their tendency to insult each other, and they kept it secret from their friends. When Buffy was accused of killing her mother's boyfriend, she pointed out that she thought Buffy should have different rules, like Superman, or a fascist society. She did agree to go help investigate said boyfriend, and found his dead former wives in his closet (turns out he was a robot, surprise). She got annoyed at Xander for telling her he'd rather not hear her talk while they were necking later, and refused to partner with him on the class 'raise an egg baby' assignment, but still hooked up with him later while looking around to investigate a missing teacher. Annnd then she got possessed by a creepy monster hatching out of the egg for a little while. Just Sunnydale things.
Buffy's birthday rolled around and Xander asked if they wanted to go together, but she denied they were dating, saying she was the one with something to be ashamed of. Still, she got jealous when Xander wanted to go save Buffy later, expressing how he'd die for the Slayer, but not for her. She discovered a book that mentioned the baddie they were currently dealing with - the Judge - in the library, but Willow caught them kissing, and their secret was blown. After learning about how Angel had turned into Angelus - his evil alter-ego, she decided this was the lowest things had ever gotten for them, and felt pretty hopeless about things. Still, she snuck onto a military installation with Xander to steal a rocket launcher, which Buffy used to take out the Judge. She did bitch, however, when she wound up on 'picking up the Judge's body parts' duty.
Cordelia grew increasingly jealous of how close Xander was to Buffy and Willow, and was attacked twice by a werewolf soon after. She and Willow complained to each other about men, as Will dealt with her own issues over boyfriend Oz (who... turned out to be the werewolf). Frustrated, Cordelia tried to catch up with her old gang, and they dissed her on account of her connection to Xander, which left her floored. He proceeded to give her a heart locket for Valentine's Day, which she was clearly moved by, but she told him she wanted to break up because they didn't fit together. He was hurt and indignant, and she was really upset about it, but tried to avoid him at school. He demanded the necklace back at school, and she pretended it was in her locker, rather than admit that she'd actually been wearing it. Her friends quickly accepted her back into the fold after she'd dropped Xander, but when he botched a spell intended to make her fall for him again, she wound up confronted by all the other girls in her school about breaking his heart. They went as far as to physically attack her, and Xander rescued her, barricading her in Buffy's room. She yelled at Xander for using the black arts to make girls like him, but was actually moved when she learned that the spell had been intended to get her back. The spell was finally broken, and afterwards, Cordelia stood up to her former best friend, Harmony, calling her a sheep and realizing she didn't need her approval. She went back to Xander, freaked out that she'd just committed social suicide.
Meanwhile, Angelus was still out there, and Cordelia nailed crosses in her car since she'd invited him to ride in there once. She kept one on her person as well, which she brandished against him when he showed up to fight Buffy. The Slayer got sick, and she visited her at the hospital, pointing out that Buffy's paranoia about a monster in the building was probably just her conjuring up a monster to fight that represented the friend she'd had that had died in a hospital when she was younger. Still, she helped investigate, flirting with a security guard to get information about the Doctor (and being happy when Xander was a little jealous about it), and being worried about Xander when he went to stay sentry at the hospital alone. She helped Giles research the monster and was enthusiastic about calling and informing Buffy that they'd found it, despite complaining about being 'dragged into' all this stuff.
When the Sadie Hawkins dance came up, Cordelia organized a boycott of it, horrified that the girls were expected to pay for everything. More strange things went down with snakes appearing all over the cafeteria, and she helped the Scoobies to perform an exorcism on the school. Later, more deaths cropped up surrounding the swim team, and she lost all will to cheerlead when she realized it might affect their bid to win state championship. She helped research sea demons as Xander went undercover on the swim team, making her not-so-secretly proud to be dating an athlete. When she found out the swim team were all monsters, she reacted by being worried that not only would she being dating an unpopular guy now, but also a monster. However, when she really thought Xander had transformed, she showed another side of herself, telling him she still cared about him and still wanted to date him, that she would understand if he wanted to be with someone else, and offering to do anything to help him - a real break from her usual superficial exterior.
As things drew to a head, she supported Xander's idea about killing Angelus, and supported him when Willow got hurt. She wished she could do more for the final showdown, but remained in a supportive role as they sought to take him down.
Cordelia didn't see Xander during the following summer, going to Las Palmas with her family, which she considered a nightmare, because of the 'organized fun' and cockroaches. She was nervous about seeing him again and asked Willow if he'd met anyone over the summer, also expressing insecurity that he'd forgotten about her. When they saw each other, they both attempted to play it too cool, and she got really annoyed by his lack of enthusiasm. Still, she agreed to go along as bait when the Scoobies needed her (complaining all the while that this was always her role), and said she was doing it for Buffy's' sake, not Xander's. She got in an argument with him, admitting she didn't believe he'd been faithful, but in classic form, their fighting just led them to making out again. She went with Buffy and the others to show Giles that the Slayer had returned from her self-imposed exile, and even stood up for Buffy about running away, understanding why she'd done it. And then a bunch of zombies attacked a party they were at, and she had to fend them off with a pool stick.
A new Slayer named Faith arrived in town, but Cordelia was notably unimpressed by her, and again, got jealous of the attention she drew from Xander. Homecoming approached, and she got incredibly intense about being crowned Queen, going all out in her campaigning against the competition. A miffed Buffy said she wasn't going to vote for her, after Cordelia forgot to tell her about yearbook pictures, but Cordelia defended herself by saying she was under a lot of pressure, and that being Queen was about being part of the school and having actual friends, something Buffy couldn't understand. Buffy responded by electing to run against her, and an intense rivalry began. When things got too heated, their friends rented them a limo and left them alone in it, telling them to work it out, but a case of mistaken identity led some vampires to think she was Faith, and her and Buffy wound up hunted. Facing the possibility of death, she realized she actually loved Xander, and Buffy got her angry enough that she would stop being afraid. It worked, because she managed to literally intimidate a vampire into running off with a monologue about how scary she was, and her and Buffy made it back just in time - to both find out they'd lost the contest.
The parents of Sunnydale all reverted to acting like teens after consuming some magical band candy, which was fine with Cordelia until her mom started borrowing her lycra pants. She was the first to suspect Buffy might be hiding a new boyfriend from them, but learned with the others that she'd been secretly seeing Angel, who had somehow returned from Hell. They staged an intervention for her, during which Cordelia expressed that she was worried about her own life, since last time, Angelus had targeted Buffy's friends. She told Buffy that she didn't trust her, even if Xander did.
The SATs rolled around, and Cordelia did great on them. She agreed to go on a double date with Oz and Willow, but when their significant others went missing, teamed up with Oz to look for them, and then stumbled upon Willow and Xander making out. Cordelia was almost sick with horror, and ran off, falling through an old staircase and getting stabbed through with a rusted piece of rebar that luckily didn't puncture anything, but sent her to the hospital for awhile. When Xander came to apologize to her in the hospital, she told him to stay away from her, dissolving into tears after he left. Extremely affected, Cordelia ignored all of Xander's calls, burning every picture she had of him, and returning to school the next day with an extreme vamp makeover. Harmony pretended to welcome her back now that she'd 'broken up with' Xander, but she turned out to be just poking fun at her, as she recommended another nerd for Cordelia to date next. The former Queen Bee was clearly very hurt and didn't even have a comeback for once - and even seemed to feel bad for the nerd in question, too. Still, she pretended to be kissing another guy when Xander was looking to make him jealous. She wound up spilling out her problems to new girl Anya, claiming she was past him and ready to live her life. When she gets attacked by a vampire at the Bronze and winds up in the trash, she starts blaming Buffy for all her problems, and accepts a 'good luck charm' from Anya, wishing that Buffy Summers had never come to Sunnydale. Anya, actually a vengeance demon, granted her wish, sucking Cordelia into a world where her wish was real, but Cordelia quickly realized how bad things would have been without Buffy. Either way, the wish was later reversed, and Cordelia never even remembered that it had happened.
She maintained her distance from the Scoobies for awhile, making snide remarks at Xander where she could, and spending her winter break in Aspen, skiing. When the mothers of Sunnydale started a campaign against witchcraft, Cordelia sided with them, telling Buffy that hanging out with witches who killed kids would end badly for her. However, when her mom confiscated all her black clothes and scented candles, she decided things had gone too far, and went to Giles for help. She assisted him in making a spell and saving Willow and Buffy (and putting out the fire from where they were almost burned at the stake). When Buffy proceeded to lose her powers for a short time, Cordelia stood up to a guy who got handsy and physically beat him herself when Buffy couldn't help. When she walked in on Buffy crying in the library, she was concerned that the world was ending again, but agreed to give Buffy a ride home without any further questions.
Faith's new Watcher, Wesley Wyndam-Pryce arrived, and he and Cordelia developed a mutual crush on each other, complicated by his age, although she was at least eighteen by then. She would come by the library dressed to the nines with the flimsiest of excuses in hopes of seeing him, and on one such occasion, stumbled across a vampire doppelganger of Willow who had managed to get to their world from the Wish!verse that she'd earlier created. She kept her locked in the book cage long enough to lecture her about the ethics of boyfriend stealing, claiming she'd only been attracted to Xander because they kept winding up in life or death situations. When Vampire Willow apologized, she let her out, and was attacked, although Wesley managed to save her. Unconcerned about how Willow was apparently a vampire now, she asked him if he wanted to go out that night. She continued to pop around to see Wesley, and it led her to get in on their research into the town's shady mayor.
When Buffy gained the power to read minds for awhile, it was revealed that Cordelia says literally everything that she thinks. She was not overly concerned when they learned about a potential school shooter (in fact, she just kept thinking about how cold she was), but she agreed to go around and try to figure out who it was going to be, bluntly asking Mr. Beech if he planned to kill a ton of people the next day. She was the one to discover classmate Jonathan's incriminating letter in the newspaper's office, but complained that he wasn't writing in to praise the cheerleaders. In the end, however, it was the school cook who was trying to poison them all.
Xander caught her looking at fancy clothes in a downtown boutique, and she admitted that she got into USC, Colorado State, Duke, and Colombia. What she didn't tell him was that she was actually working as a shopgirl there, having lost her home since her dad had been arrested for tax fraud. All her possessions had been seized, and she couldn't afford to go to any of the colleges she'd been accepted to. She tried to warn the others from shopping for their prom dresses at the store she was working at, afraid they'd realize the truth, but when the store was attacked by a hellhound, Xander learned the truth. He lied for her and paid for the dress she was working towards buying, and she showed up looking gorgeous at the prom, where she thanked Xander, and danced with Wesley.
When Wesley was ready to leave the country after things went to hell with Faith, he called Cordelia first to tell her, and she rushed to confront Giles about it, learning that Buffy had quit the Watcher's Council. She blamed Buffy for always thinking about herself, and not about how this would affect Wesley or Cordelia. With Faith in a coma, they now had to deal with the impending threat of the Mayor's planned 'ascension'. She shared a moment with Wesley where he admitted that he had no reason to think he was needed or wanted here, and they shared the world's most awkward kiss, realizing that they actually had zero chemistry. A plan was set into place, and graduation proceeded - with the entire graduating class of 1999 armed and trained to fight the Mayor when he turned into a giant demon snake.
Following graduation, Cordelia moved to Los Angeles to pursue a dream of acting, where she ran into Angel at a party. While she told him that she was living in Malibu at a condo on a beach, she excuses herself before he can ask too many questions, and leaves the party to go back to her crappy apartment, where she wears old sweats, has only one dress to her name and a largely empty closet, and has to eat cookies she stole from the party for dinner. It's clear that she's having a hard time getting any acting gigs, and when she gets invited to meet with a famous investor, she admits to him that she lost everything and that LA isn't what she expected. He promises to give her what she needs and she starts crying, before realizing that he doesn't have any mirrors and has to actually be a vampire. Saved by Angel, she repays the favor by helping to rescue and patch Angel up when he gets himself in trouble. Worried that the vamp is going to come after her, she invites herself to hang around and has the idea of starting up a detective agency for Angel to help people.
Excited about this new project (and the potential cash it could bring), she orders them calling cards, just as Angel's new pal Doyle has a vision sent to him by the Powers that Be about a creature. They follow the vision to a nearby club and Cordelia starts networking immediately, handing out cards and asking Doyle about these visions of his. She admits that if she were given such a gift, she'd want to return it, and dismisses his visions as lame and vague. She fills Doyle in on how Angel can't experience a moment of pure happiness or else he turns homicidal, and takes notes on what to research in regards to the demon they might be looking for. Doyle and Angel come to her apartment, and Doyle says it's refreshing to see a woman live as messy as she does, and shows that she lives in the moment. Together, they track down and stop a demon parasite. She starts getting into playing the role of secretary, giddy about printing their first invoice, even as she chastises Doyle about his drinking habits. Spike shows up, however, and she hides at Doyle's place, telling him about Spike's past and worrying when Angel doesn't call. She pulls a crossbow on Spike when he shows up, and he tells them that he'll trade them Angel for the ring that allows him to walk in the daylight. She and Doyle rip the apartment up looking for the ring, and find it in the sewers. They get help from Oz to rescue Angel when Spike inevitably reneges on the deal, and then help him stop the torture demon that Spike brought along from capturing some children. They watch Angel have his first moment in the sun in hundreds of years, before he decides to give the ring up.
The high of employment fizzles quickly when bills start pouring in, and while Cordelia makes the office more homey, she also becomes hell-bent on establishing a paid clientele. While helping a woman with a creepy stalker who can literally detach his body parts, she wonders why anyone ever dates anybody, clearly much more cynical about romance than she ever used to be. Their first real check renews her exuberance however, and she and Doyle go out to celebrate. Things are still difficult for her in the acting world, as she can't even land a trash bag commercial, and she avoids answering calls from her girlfriends back in Sunnydale, because she doesn't want to have to avoid questions about how sucky her life is now. When her apartment becomes infested with cockroaches, she gives up and brings her stuff to Angel's, moving in. Doyle takes her apartment shopping and uses one of his shady contacts to find her a place that's perfect - except for the fact that it's haunted. Cordelia enters into an intense battle of wills with the resident ghost, stubbornly refusing to give up her rent-controlled dream apartment. She admits to Angel that the apartment symbolizes her getting back everything that had been taken from her as a punishment for the person she'd been in High School, and she admits that she considers her struggle against poverty as her own path to redemption. In a confrontation with the ghost herself, the old woman tells Cordelia that no one cares about her and that she doesn't deserve anything, that she's worthless and everyone will be glad when she's dead, leaving her to hang in the living room. Angel and Doyle burst in to save her but she's clearly freaked out by the ghost's assessment, crying out that she knows her, and that no one can stop her. Angel tried to get through to her by reminding her that she was Cordelia Chase, but it wasn't until the ghost called her a bitch that she pulled out of her self-pity, and realized that being a bitch was part of who she was, and one of her strengths. It was revealed that the ghost had actually killed her son and buried him in the wall, and with her exorcised, her son's ghost (Dennis) remained to haunt the apartment, but remained grateful and friendly to Cordelia. The experience left Cordelia strong enough to call her friend back in Sunnydale and lie to her about how things were going for her.
Falling into a pattern of investigating and stopping demons, Cordelia became annoyed that Angel wasn't grateful enough for their assistance, which she later regretted when a cursed talking stick rendered all his emotions on the surface. In the end, she told him that she wanted him to toughen up again to how he used to be. She tried going on a date with a rich investment guy, only to realize that she was bored by him for not being brave or interesting, now that she was used to running with Angel and Doyle. When her date ran off when she was attacked by a vampire, Doyle jumped in to save her, and she was genuinely surprised by his courage and grateful. Taking notice of his substance, she talked to Angel about it, although she swore she'd have to kill herself now because she'd promised never to date another fixer-upper after Xander. She was about to ask him out when Doyle's... ex-wife, Harry, walked in, complicating things. She was really nice to Cordelia and despite herself, she grew to like her, but had to step in and help save Doyle when Harry's new husband almost ritually sacrificed him at his bachelor party. She realized Doyle was still hung up on Harry and went out of her way to cheer him up (albeit in her usual insensitive but charming manner), assuring him that nice guys didn't always finish last.
After Angel vanished to Sunnydale for three days, following a vision Doyle had about Buffy, Cordelia was worried about the effect seeing his old flame had had on him. She was surprised to find out Angel avoided Buffy while he was there, but then Buffy showed up on their doorstep and they had an awkward reunion, where she hastily introduced Doyle and then dragged him out of there. Shortly thereafter, she roped Doyle into trying to make a video ad for Angel Investigations with her about "The Dark Avenger" Angel, and told Doyle they shouldn't keep secrets from each other, unaware that he was hiding his own half-demonic origins from her. Just as he was about to open up, he had a vision, and in the process of helping get other half-brachen demons out of the country on a ship, one of them told her the truth about Doyle. Upon seeing him again she slapped him for not trusting her and assuming she'd be superficial enough to care, then demanded he ask her out for dinner already. However, they never got that dinner, because Doyle sacrificed himself to save the half-brachens from a bomb on board, but not before kissing Cordelia and passing his visions to her.
Distraught over Doyle's death, Cordelia searched for any tangible evidence that he'd left behind of existing, while telling Angel that she refused to let him shut her out, and assuring him she wasn't going anywhere. In the middle of an audition, she broke down crying over Doyle, before experiencing her first vision and realizing what Doyle had done. Upon returning to the office she kissed both Angel and the empath demon, Barney, who were there, hoping she could get rid of them that way, outraged that she had to carry them now, as she believed she had nothing to atone for. She grew angry at Barney when he read her emotions and said she'd lost someone recently, but willingly sketched what she saw for Angel to go track down. She also tried to pass her visions off to Wesley when he showed up before she even realized who it was, and filled him in after Angel refused to let Wesley help, since he clearly didn't want to lose him the way he'd lost Doyle. She declared that she'd never forgive Doyle for doing this to her, but Barney pointed out that he'd trusted her with an enormous responsibility and gave her a rare and important gift that she was worthy of. However, Barney also turned out to be evil, and then pointed out all her worst traits to her: that she was self-absorbed, delusional, full of regret, didn't like to hear the truth, and knew in her heart she was a terrible actress. Worst of all, he told her that she felt like she'd let Doyle die, that maybe if she'd been nicer to him, and opened her heart, she could have saved him, but instead she'd only cared about herself. He wound up capturing her and putting her on auction to those who wanted 'seer's eyes' (and was offended that the bidding only started at 2000 dollars). Angel saved her with Wesley's help, and she framed her drawing of the first vision as a reminder of what Doyle had left her.
She started worrying about Angel when he looked half-dead, but when Wesley found an article about a victim who had a Christian cross carved in their left cheek - a calling card of Angelus - she told him to leave, and insisted Angel was good, and her friend, and refused to turn on him. However, when Angel walked in and said they were right, she was instantly ready to kill him. In reality, Angel worried he was killing people in his sleep, but it turned out to be another vampire Angel had sired, named Penn, who she helped him track. Afterwards, she reassured him that it didn't matter that Angelus was still inside of him, because it wasn't the only thing that was. She also promised to murder him if he ever did go dark side.
Cordelia meets a guy who turns out to be too good to be true, named Wilson Christopher, a charming man who she sleeps with, only to wake up extremely pregnant the next day, with the spawn of a haxil beast. Wesley and Angel came to find her, where she was crying, trying to wake up from this nightmare, and Angel went to track down the truth of what had happened, while Wesley supported her through her sudden pregnancy. When the Doctor withdrew fluid, it turned out to be acidic, and she grew increasingly, dangerously protective of her seven growing children, until she attacked Wesley and went to meet with the other mothers and give birth. Angel killed the haxil beast with liquid nitrogen before she could, and the babies withered and died within her, breaking the spell, and leaving Cordelia free to smash the haxil beast's frozen head. Two days later, she returned to work, dismissing Wesley and Angel's concerns about how she'd be doing after her ordeal and telling them that she'd learned she could trust them both with her life.
They proceeded to fall into a pattern of Cordelia having visions, working with Wesley to research demons, and assisting Angel in stopping evil, turning into quite the team. At one point, Angel accidentally called Wesley Doyle, and Cordelia called him out on it, letting him know that he could open up to her, and he admitted the guilt he felt over his death. At one point, Angel wound up saving the life of a famous actress, who became enamored with him, and Cordelia was star-struck, hoping that hanging around her would finally be her ticket to fame herself. However, her over-enthusiasm led her to answer one too many questions that Rebecca had - including telling her how Angel could make her into a vampire, and when the actress got Angel hopped up on doximine, Angelus came out to play. Confronting the vampire, he said that sitting through her acting was worse than hell and told her everyone was laughing at her, but she countered him by admitting she prepared for this possibility and thought about it literally every day, bluffing about having holy water in her thermos so that she can distract him long enough for Wesley to shove him down an elevator shaft. They chained him to the bed, and while she said she was too big of a person to let this get in the way of their friendship, she also notably was in no hurry to untie him.
While Cordelia was working on getting a new client, Faith showed up in LA and tried to kill Angel, hired by the evil lawyers, Wolfram and Hart. She was ready to go into hiding, but helped looked for assaults and killings so that Angel could track her down anyway. Dennis tried to warn Cordelia out of her apartment, but she got cornered inside with Wesley by the psycho Slayer, who elbowed her in the face. She woke up crying when Angel showed up, feeling incredibly helpless, as Wesley had been taken and was being tortured by his former charge. Cordy was subsequently outraged when Angel brought Faith home in a bid to redeem her, and took herself a paid vacation while she was around because she could not trust her.
The crew met eccentric millionaire David Nabbit, a nerdy guy who she briefly considered prostituting herself to in order to wind up rich - only to realize she couldn't go through with it. After Wolfram and Hart got a murderess acquitted, she tried to talk Angel out of breaking into Wolfram and Hart, worried that he was going to get caught. Instead, he came out with some encrypted files that she helped break, with the tech support of Willow by phone. They gained access to a prophecy that Wesley originally interpreted to mean that Angel was going to die, which didn't particularly worry her, because he faced death every day of his life. However, a vocah demon infected her and left her succumbing to an endless stream of visions, where she experienced so much pain that she was put in a neuropsychiatric unit in the hospital, where she became non-responsive after screaming for hours, unable to even be sedated. After Wesley and Angel magically restored her, she awoke, telling Angel that she'd seen and felt so much pain, that they needed to help everyone. Ready to turn over a new, more selfless leaf, she couldn't help but maintain aspects of her old personality - but told Wesley and Angel that they were her family. Wesley realized he'd misinterpreted the Prophecy: it meant Angel was going to turn human, not die.
Their office having burned down while she was out of it, they started working out of her apartment, using a white board to keep track of leads. Cordelia had a vision about a prio motu demon, which led them to a demon bar called Caritas, which served as a sanctuary for the supernatural, where the bar's Host, Lorne, could read people's souls if they sang karaoke. Angel accidentally wound up killing the demon, that he was supposed to keep alive, showing that it was possible for them to misinterpret the vague visions sent. She encourages Angel not to be too hard on himself about it, and promises to stay with him through the fight. He throws out their whiteboard, done with keeping score on the road to redemption. He asked them to look into cases revolving around the Hyperion hotel, which he had history with, and helped him exorcise a paranoia demon that was haunting the place. Even though she said the place gave her the heebie jeebies, Angel decided it was the perfect place for their new headquarters.
They take to cleaning up the new place and get some assistance from David Nabbit at financing it. When she has a vision of Charles Gunn being in trouble, she makes herself 'his protector' and winds up going on an adventure with him to reclaim Angel's stolen car, fighting some vampires and being way out of her element in the hood. While Gunn feels like she's high maintenance, she still refuses to back down from helping him out and later argues with Wesley that they should offer to pay Gunn for his help. She notices when Angel starts acting off his game, slightly (and sniffing her hair), but it's not until Angel starts talking about seeing Darla, his dead sire, again that she tells him that he's gone crazy. She and Wesley prepare a tranquilizer gun just in case, but when the police show up to say that Angel has killed the husband of the woman he thinks is really Darla, they still stand their ground and refuse to say anything to incriminate him. Gunn realizes that Angel could only have gotten in that house if the real owners were dead. She's relieved when Angel goes to visit a swami, but he turns out to be a fake, and while he's gone Wesley has to pretend to be Angel, leading Cordelia to get jealous when it winds up landing him a rich and famous girlfriend. Angel winds up bringing Darla home to help her since she's also dealing with a human soul now, and she gets viscerally upset when Angel implies that he's going through his struggle with a soul without any support. She also quickly corrects Darla when she calls him Angelus.
Cordelia complains about Angel's constant Darla-brooding after she leaves, but is cheered up by attending a premiere party with Wesley and Virginia, until he spills cocktail sauce on her dress. They're enthusiastic to learn that Angel is actually on a case again and volunteer to research for him, which leads them into contact with the Shroud of Rahmon, which makes people go crazy upon contact with it. While its effects on her are relatively harmless, Angel winds up biting the policewoman, Kate, and she and Wesley worry that their good intentions may have accidentally reawakened Angel's bloodlust. They grow increasingly worried about him together, and when Gunn finds her location, they refuse to enable him by going with. Upon their return, she threatens Darla, feeling that she doesn't deserve any of their sympathy.
Darla wound up turned back into a vampire by Drusilla, who Angelus had previously sired, thanks to the interference of Wolfram and Hart. Upon learning about this, Cordelia was freaked out about Dru being in town, calling her a loony, and tried to help Angel track down the place where they could be bringing Darla back. She was horrified to learn that Angel had locked up a room full of Wolfram and Hart lawyers with a newly revamped Darla and Drusilla, but when she questioned him on it with Wesley and Gunn, he proceeded to fire all three of them.
Cordelia was left bereft: angry, frustrated, and disappointed that Angel would turn them all away like that. She wound up at Caritas hoping for answers, and ended up doing drunken karaoke with Gunn and Wes, only to receive a vision about a woman in trouble. The three took care of the problem on their own, and decided to continue on with the agency, without Angel. She grew increasingly annoyed at the boys spending all their time in her apartment, and started looking for an office for their new agency, while they spent a lot of time bickering over what to call themselves now. Wesley's girlfriend, Virginia, brought them food, champagne, and their first real case. They worked another to remove a demon eye from the back of a young girl's forehead. However, Gunn also took a case to deal with some teens being attacked by the police, and Cordelia tried to talk him out of provoking the police into beating him up to just to prove that they're wiling to do it. When he went through with it anyway, she and Wesley went to save him, but Wesley wound up shot. She demanded they take him to a hospital, where Angel showed up. She confronted him about how it took a gunshot wound to make him give a crap and told him to stay away, since he'd walked away from them.
Angel later showed up at their agency to take a book from them, and while Cordelia tried to stop him, Wesley told her to just let him have it. His aggressive demeanor drove her to tell him she didn't know who he was anymore, and later to rant that it would be better if Angel were just to go evil so that they could at least stake him. She admitted that she had nowhere to go on a Friday night because she no longer had any other friends - the mission had become her entire life.
After they helped the little girl remove the eye from the back of her head, other demons of that type arrived and infected Cordelia with one. Wesley told Angel that Cordelia had become increasingly solitary over the last few months because of her visions, which she couldn't turn away from, and explained that she was relentlessly compelled to do something about them. Angel saved her from the demons, but she told him he had really hurt her feelings by walking out on them. Still, he returned to Angel Investigations, and asked if he could work for them, feeling he could still do some good there, and they reluctantly agreed.
While Cordelia admitted to Angel that she was excited for them all to save more people, she also dismissed any notions he had about things being okay between them by telling him that they weren't friends anymore. Around the same time, her old best friend, Harmony Kendall, arrived in town, and Cordelia invited her to stay with her, unaware that she had become an evil vampire since they graduated. Misreading all the signals, Cordelia talked to Willow about how Harmony was clearly gay for her, but Willow corrected her on matter, and warned her not to trust Harmony. Still, Cordelia made the others give Harmony a chance, and the vampire told them she wanted to work with the good guys. When Angel argued the point, claiming she would turn on them because she didn't have a soul, Cordelia brought up that he'd betrayed all of them when he did have one, demonstrating that she was still hurt and angry about what he'd done. Angel proceeded to buy her a bunch of new clothes to get back in her good graces, which surprised Wesley by working like a charm.
She got another vision about a man stabbing himself in the eye with a kitchen knife. They track down the identity of the man, who has disappeared, along with his family, and meeting with a dead end, go to Caritas. They find Lindsey there, the lawyer from Wolfram and Hart, and Cordelia is impressed by his singing - although the gang is less impressed when Lorne tells them that Angel & Lindsey will have to solve this case together. They track the place that Lindsey got a new hand transplant from so that Angel can stop it, while Cordelia begins showing signs of suffering from the visions that have been given to her. She admits to the others when pressed that they're starting to get more painful, but accepts this as the price for them.
Cordelia finally won a role that seems to have some weight to it, in a national commercial, and the team went out to celebrate, spending some happy time together for the first time in awhile. Angel came to visit her on the set, where he got to witness the director being demeaning and sexist towards her, behavior he couldn't stomach in silence. While initially, Cordelia was angry at Angel for ruining her shot, but then she admits that even she was embarrassed for herself. Lorne showed up to ask them to help investigate a demon who had mysteriously portalled into Caritas, and Cordelia received a vision of a woman - Fred - in a library with a portal opening behind her. They discovered that Fred had gone missing five years prior, and found a book, that when Cordelia read out of, opened a portal to Pylea, through which Lorne's cousin emerged. They learned a little about Lorne's history, and after getting Lorne's cousin's help in tracking down the demon from earlier, they send him back through the portal by reading from the book again. However, when Cordelia opens the portal, she winds up going through it....
And into Wonderland.
Abilities/Special Powers:
• Visions from the Powers That Be
Cordelia was passed the ability to receive visions from Allen Francis Doyle before his death. The visions are brief, disjointed images sent from higher powers, of violent confrontations with the supernatural world. While having one, Cordelia experiences the pain of the victim, and is left with a splitting migraine afterwards. They are intended to help Angel in his quest for redemption, and usually give the gang a very short time to react and try to save the victim.
• Adoptive Muscle Memory
Cordelia has demonstrated an ability to mimic movements perfectly after observing them only once, something she's used to her advantage both in cheerleading and in combat training.
Third-Person Sample:
"How the mighty have fallen," Cordelia murmured to herself as she stood on the threshold of her new apartment, surveying the damage. And by 'damage', she meant inherited state of disrepair with which the only place in town willing to grant her a lease on less than fifty dollars down had come outfitted. When she'd been through here with the landlord, she'd tried to see the bright side, to focus on the fact that this was an apartment in LA and that in itself was, well, if not living the dream, at least more dream-adjacent than being back in Sunnydale. However, alone now with her unpainted walls, single suitcase full of possessions, and the overhead light fritzing out even now, her heart felt like it literally couldn't sink any lower without crashing through the likely far too thin floorboards.
Reluctantly, she took a few steps inside, lifting her too-light luggage onto the bed, and trying hard to ignore the fact that she'd never so much as traveled with less than three carry-ons before, whereas now everything that she could consider her own was nestled snugly into one duffel from Goodwill. She could feel something creeping in on her, a growing, gnawing dread in her stomach as she let the silence descend around her: that this was going to be it for her, forever. That maybe this was even all she deserved.
She unzipped the bag with emphasis, moving to take action - any action - rather than to let the doubts start to gain ground. Momentum, that was all she needed, and moving here in the first place had been the initiating act in getting that particular ball rolling. She pulled out her single cocktail dress, moved to the closet to quickly get a hangar so that it could breathe again. She noted with a frown that it was already rumpled from transporting it without a proper garment bag, and realized that her first instinct was Oh, I'll have to have Maria iron--
Except there was no Maria. There was no ironing board. If she wanted something done, she was going to have to do it herself, now.
Rather than allow that to plant another grain of self-pity, she rolled her eyes and mumbled, "How hard can it be, really?", running her hands firmly across the dress in brisk motions, as if she could will the wrinkles out with pure determination.
First-Person Sample:
[ network | voice ]
[ now that cordelia's all settled in, she has some pressing questions for you all. you're welcome. ] Soooo what's the sitch with demons, vampires, and other bump in the nights around here? I mean... assuming that you believe in that kind of thing. Not saying that I do. Just, you know, theoretically, if someone did, would it be wise to carry a crossbow around in your Prada bag at night? Asking for a friend.
Re-App Third-Person Sample:
Sometimes she felt him watching her out of the corner of his eye, that intense brooding stare of his boring into her and she wondered, not for the first time, about the future he had come from.
It wasn't that she was afraid of the worst, but she was also well aware of the sort of lives they lived. The things they would inevitably face. She'd come to assume that at least they were going to face them together, no matter what. The belief was born half out of her innate stubbornness and half out of the fact that for the first time in her life, she really felt like she was a part of something, that she'd found where she belonged.
That she had found her family.
But there was some kind of disturbing undercurrent to the way Angel's eyes lingered on her when he thought she didn't notice, something that twisted her stomach to dwell on. As much as she wanted to hope that it was just something like a really bad future haircut, she had the distinct impression that there was something else lurking in the here-to-come for them, something he didn't want to talk about. Something that had changed things so much between them that seeing her the way she was now was clearly a shock to him, on some level.
She wasn't even touching that kiss, though. Some things were better written off to Wonderland cabin fever.
Re-App First-Person Sample:
[ network | video ]
[ cordelia fixes the screen with a dazzling, if not slightly forced, smile, reaching up to check her hair once before she dives in, clasping her hands together in front of herself ]
Alright, so. I'm convinced that Angel's usual word of mouth-y PR campaign is as effective as always - as in, not very - so we're going to try this the old fashioned way: commercials!
Are you facing a problem that can't be solved by making a wish upon your endless walk-in closet? Maybe a mystery or two, of the super or paranormal variety, beyond the apparently eternal questions of why are we here and how the heck do we get home?
Well, lucky for you, we have just what you need, right here on the fifth floor. [ she gestures slightly with a hand that gets caught in the bottom of the frame to whoever is filming, shooting them a slightly annoyed look until they shift the camera to show the door of Angel Investigations, which she proceeds to point out a la Vanna White ] Angel Investigations: we help the helpless. For a very reasonable nominal fee.