Disclaimer: Don't own `em. The song is Kasey Chambers' `Not Pretty Enough'.
Summary: Enough stories have appeared where Angel's soul gets permanently attached but he decides (for whatever reason) to get together with Cordelia. This is what I think would go through Buffy's mind on finding that out.
Rating: PG at the most.
Distribution: It'll (eventually) go up at ff.net, and anyone who wants it can take it, so long as they tell me where it's a-goin'.
Notes: This goes out to all you people who want some angsty songfic. I would also like to say this is POV, which means it's what Buffy thinks. Or rather, what I think she thinks. I think.

The news reached her at the precise moment it would have its most devastating impact. Just as the grief over losing Heaven began to recede and her loneliness made itself known she heard. Angel's soul was a permanent fixture in his body and he had decided to be with Cordelia.

Buffy could remember all the times he had sworn eternal devotion to her, all the times he had reassured her that he would never choose Cordelia over her. Apparently it was all lies. All those beautiful words of love and trust were nothing more than pillow talk until he could find someone he really loved. Just like all the men in her life.

//Am I not pretty enough?
Is my heart too broken?//

The questions ricocheted in her mind. Why did they always leave her only to come back with someone better on their arms? Her father had been first. Buffy remembered the last Christmas card she got from him, in which he and his new wife had celebrated the birth of their twins. She and Dawn hadn't even gotten a cheque in the mail. Riley had vanished from her life months before only to return with a perfect wife. Sam and Riley were so perfectly matched it put the lie to the perfection Buffy had thought she had with Angel.

//Do I cry too much?
Am I too outspoken?//

Parker had said she was too clingy. Parker was a user. Parker now had a girlfriend he had been with for a year and a half, and rumour had it they were engaged. She tried to push the thought from her mind, but had little success. It was hard with the man she still loved more than anything else on the face of the earth being the lover of one of her erstwhile enemies. Did he have to fall in love with Cordelia?

That was the one thing that made it all unbearable. He was with Cordelia Chase. A girl who had made life miserable for Buffy all through high school. Cordelia, someone Angel had rejected constantly and someone who had always made him look positively terrified when they were left alone together. Buffy felt an uncomfortable pinch from memory of that evening a couple days before Halloween years before when she had run across Angel and Cordelia flirting together at the Bronze. Should she have known even then?

//Don't I make you laugh?
Should I try it harder?//

He had been smiling that night. Smiling and laughing, chatting easily with the young woman who was everything Buffy was not. He had reassured her that night and every night after that she was the one he wanted, but Buffy could see the women who threw themselves at him. So many were more beautiful, more accomplished, wittier, smarter, richer, more experienced . . . just more than she was. She had always been certain it was simply a matter of time before one came along and charmed Angel away.

//Why do you see right through me?//

Not completely certain though. He always knew how she felt. That was what had kept her believing in spite of herself that somehow they would work out. When she was sad or happy, when she needed someone to listen to her rant about something, or when she just wanted to be held he knew. He always knew.

Until one day he didn't. One evening, surrounded by the smoke from a burning school, the sound of sirens and flashing lights, he left without saying goodbye. He had left telling her it was because she needed something other than him. At the time she thought he wasn't saying goodbye because it wasn't. She thought he wanted to leave the option open for return.

//I live, I breathe, I let it rain on me
I sleep, I wake, I try hard not to break//

So she waited. She waited through the loneliness and her friends insisting that she couldn't have been as attached to Angel as she thought. She waited through one bad relationship and one so mediocre it nearly made her hair stand on end every time she thought of it now. Three years passed while she waited for him to renew her faith in them. He never did.

Instead he had gained for himself the things he had claimed he could never provide for her, while she had fought and struggled, dying inside a little more every day until her only choice was to die all the way. She hadn't known at the time that he was getting a family and friends while hers drifted further away. All she knew was that he was no longer there when she needed him the most, and that somehow she had lost her guardian angel.

//I crave, I love, I've waited long enough
I try as hard as I can//

Seeing the fact of him and Cordelia tore her up inside in ways she never thought possible. Because even when he was a soulless beast, she had been the only thing he thought about. Now he seemed oblivious. She had to wonder if it was her.

//Am I not pretty enough?//

Was there something about her appearance that drove men away? Her father had never called her pretty, that was always reserved for Dawn. Parker said she was a good roll in the hay. Riley had always babbled about how strong and good she was, even Spike never seemed to say anything to her appearance. Only Angel had ever called her beautiful. Maybe that was a lie like everything else he ever said.

//Is my heart too broken?//

She knew her love for Angel had kept her from loving Riley the way he deserved. Certainly for the soldier's sake it was best that he'd left, but she had wonder. Was she damaged goods now? Had being with Angel done something to her so irreparable that she would never find someone to take away the loneliness?

Certainly every other minute with Riley had been a study of keeping him from seeing how much she bled for her vampire lover. Every third minute she had to hide her pain from her friends. She knew they had suffered as much as she did. Giles had lost Jenny, Xander lost Cordelia, Willow lost Oz. Her friends had found new loves, clearly there had to be something wrong with her that she couldn't move past Angel.

//Do I cry too much?
Am I too outspoken?//

Maybe everyone else kept their pain better hidden than she did. Maybe everyone lost the way she did and she was the only one who made such a big deal out of it. She did try to relegate her pain out of the way. She hid behind duty and responsibility to keep it filed away where it would offend no one. Still, somehow her agony leaked out causing her friends to lash out in irritation.

//Don't I make you laugh?
Should I try it harder?//

She had come back from the dead to demands that she be grateful for the new lifetime of torment she was being subjected to. She tried. She did. Her friends only had her best interests in mind after all. They told her she should stay away from Angel, that he would impede her progress in returning to normality. She listened because she knew they had her best interests at heart. She did have to see him once, hiding the pain at having to keep her secret from everyone. He knew.

//Why do you see right through me?//

Damn him. Why did he always know? He had taken one look at her carefully constructed mask and had pulled her into his arms. That one move had broken her resolve and she had sobbed, taking in the comfort only he could provide. For one moment she forgot the good intentions of her friends and luxuriated in her soulmate's strong embrace.

In time the moment ended and she was forced to pull away. She had seen the hurt and confusion in his eyes, felt it mirrored in her heart, but knew that it was for the best that she leave. Their lives were separate now, he had told her it was for the best as much as everyone else. She had ignored his hand as it briefly reached for her, ignored his soft sweet voice as it said something about not closing him out. Instead she turned and went back to Sunnydale (home was left behind) and fell into Spike's arms.

//I laugh, I feel, I make believe it's real//

He made her feel. Something, anything. After leaving Angel behind it was as though the part of her that could feel was somewhere else. Someplace disassociated with her. So, she playacted for everyone. At least the pain was gone. It only came back when she would open her eyes and see the cold body next to hers with its sharp lines and savage beauty. Seeing hard angles instead of classical elegance on the crypt floor beside her would bring to mind that moment of entreaty before Angel's gaze too, had shuttered and he had left.

//I fall, I freeze, I pray down on my knees
I hope, I stand, I take it like a man//

The moment Angel's pleading eyes would enter her memory she would pull away and hurry to leave. The pain would be overwhelming. Still, that moment let her remember the last time she had seen love in anyone's eyes for her. Buffy Summers. Not the Slayer, not Buffy-the- best-friend, not Buffy-the-college-girl, not the vast number of fake identities she peddled to the people around her as her own.

For a moment, through the agony she would feel hope for her love to return. That was why she was with Spike. For those brief moments when hope revived.

//I try as hard as I can//

She clung to those moments, and that was why she clung to Spike. Until now. Now Angel was with Cordelia. Now he turned to the seer for comfort. Apparently there were those who eve said Cordelia had become a warrior. That made Buffy wonder. If Cordelia was a warrior, what did that make her? The Slayer was supposed to be a warrior, but if Cordelia was a warrior too, Buffy couldn't be. What the two women were was so radically different as to make the term applicable only to one.

Angel would only be with a fellow warrior. Buffy was certain of that much. He would be with someone who was such a perfect match for him he felt no compunction about taking her with him into battle. Clearly Buffy was not this person, and even more clearly she could not be a warrior. So what was she?

//Am I not pretty enough?
Is my heart too broken?//

There just had to be something wrong with her. It was the only explanation. She clearly had misjudged when she thought that Angel loved her as much and in the same way she loved him. Or maybe it was just that she was a freak for not being able to move on. Something in her was wrong and that was why her heart seemed to always be bleeding.

//Do I cry too much?
Am I too outspoken?//

Maybe she had driven him away with her personality. She had been so nasty to him so many times, maybe he just gave up on her.

//Don't I make you laugh?
Should I try it harder?//

She had seen him with his friends, she had never made him smile that much, never made him laugh and joke. Perhaps he needed Cordelia to lighten his load instead of always adding to it with her own problems and issues. They both had so much agony in both their lives, maybe they just weren't meant to be together because of it.

It hurt though. It hurt that he used to be there whenever she needed him. He used to know with no prompting what she needed. He always knew.

//Why do you see right through me?//

Why didn't he see now?

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