You know, there are days when I really, -really- wish I'd listened to my folks when they told me I'd end up regretting it if I didn't stop poking my pointy nose into other people's business.

Not that that would ever happen, mind you. I mean in the past few decades I've come to believe my penchant for other-involvement isn't just a bad habit; it's a genetically inherent personality trait. I'm mean let's be honest children - I'm the HOST. I'm incapable of not butting in. I'm Mr. Mother hen of the Cosmos himself, and I do everything but distribute yenta like chicken soup. -I never shut up.-

Sufficient to say I'm a classic 'sticking you nose in' type. I've made a career of it. And not only have I made a regular habit of using my empathy powers to read other people's futures but I did so by owning and operating a Karaoke bar.
That old saying they like to bandy about Bartenders being the world's oldest guild of psychologists? You don't want to know the accuracy in that statement Lambs.

Let's just be as non-offensive as possible by saying that it's true.

So that's the long and short of it. I'm a professional butt-er inner. I spend the majority of my time seeing the future, talking about the future, giving someone a much-needed pat on the shoulder or kick in the butt. Or harassing Harold about the proper way to make a Sea Breeze or Sex on the Beach. I swear the kid should have flunked out of his bartending class. He's moved beyond the rank of average moron.

Most of the time I'll even admit to liking my job - as crazy as it makes me sound.

There are days or moments though, I wish I'd just followed Mom's advice and taken that job with that paunchy used-car salesman.

Not all readings are fun. No big surprise there: I mean if there's one thing I've learned over the years it's that life's full of a pretty fair balance of ups and downs. And the downs seem a lot more frequent. Still, for the most part I never run into anything I'm not prepared to handle. It's helpful having so much alcohol handy. It's a rare thing for me to not see anything at all or to not have the words to make things seem at least a little better. But then even I have my down nights.

The hardest part of this job isn't the constant noise or smells or visions. It's the silences you can't figure out how to break.

Take the woman in the corner over there for instance. Cordelia Chase is really starting to piss me off, you know. And not because she's managing to rain on any particular parade. No, what's starting to get to me goes beyond the sullen silences and the drowning herself in Tequila. It goes beyond the fact she always takes my favorite place to sit myself if I happen to want to people watch. It's about more than the fact she keeps digging the cashews out of our big bowls of counter Chex mix and leaves the peanuts for everyone else.

No, what's getting to me, what's really steamin' my head is that not -once- has she even bothered to sing.

Uhm, -hello!- Earth to reality here little miss demon detector! I do -not- run a sousing factory here. Zedet's Pedals you're a minor┘ You think I don't know you're not over twenty one? You're killin' my fraternal conscience here. And you can't even bother to at least consider browsing through the musical options. I run a -guidance service- here sweetheart. Not a 'chronic avoiding the issue' anonymous club. And you're being outright rude.

If you wanted a place to numb out the world and destroy your liver you should have found another establishment. Like it or not sweetheart I've reached the end of my tether. As soon as we lose the eleven o'clock rush crowd we're gonna have to have a little heart-to heart. You following me here?

Humans can be such morons sometimes. Stupid, self-defeating, mopey creatures the lot of them. Of course I'm not saying those traits are limited soley to their race, seeing as I had to take the young lady's boss to the mats over the very same thing less than two months ago. Still though, it really starts to get old after awhile. I thought that Angel had more than paid off Angel Investigations 'brood and anxst' quotient for the next┘oh I don't know -two centuries,- only now it turns out he's contagious.

I swear I don't know why I even bother sometimes. Why can't people who need help and saving just admit it already? Do you have to not only hold their hand the entire way through, but leave them thinking the end result was all entirely their own idea?

Her aura is black. Well okay, maybe not so much black as a foresty green or a really dark gray, but you get the idea, right? I told Angel a while ago in the middle of his down swing that his was beige - that he was losing himself to his apathy, Cordelia though hasn't gone that route. Instead she's found one even more slippery. Self doubt, guilt and an undeniable air of defeat and cynicism has taken her over. Believe me it's not a pretty thing either.

You want to know what I remember most clearly about Cordelia Chase the first time I laid eyes on her? I could barely stand to -look- at her. I mean it's rare to meet somebody with so many shifting swirls of love and passion and fierce loyalty. It's like staring straight into a floodlight.

The past few months though have mucked up her inner projectors pretty good though.

I suppose my job is going to be to get her talking long enough to get those smeary lens cleaned back up.

Well that and maybe get her to cry for once.

Cordelia Chase doesn't cry. I know this because it's another one of those things you can almost sense about a person when you've been at it long enough. Well that and of course she's always been far easier to read them most people. I don't know if it's her or her link to the power's or her gift as a seer or what but she's never been something easily blocked out. Her feelings┘heck her who damn soul has always been so close to the surface. It's made getting to know her fairly easy without ever having to actually spend to much time talking to her or listening to her sing. Which is a relief cause the girl is completely tone deaf.

I do admit she fascinates me sometimes, though.

I wonder if any of the boys in that office have any idea what they've got in their hands.

"Our hearts were open." And there is the sum and total of the problem as of late. Little Princess has never been able to -not- love totally. It's her greatest strength and her greatest failing. Now I admit I don't know much about her background beyond the whole Riches to Rags schtick, but I get the feeling she's had very little enduring affection. Our stubborn, opinionated seer has probably never known permanent, selfless love in her entire life, which makes me marvel at how affective she used to be at actually giving it.

And therein lay's the true destruction in all of this. How do you tell a girl who's got more responsibility on her shoulders than she can handle already that it's not her fault Angel's too dumb to realize she's fallen head over heels? That she's in love with him?

Angel didn't just fire and then re-join his crew in his little quest for re-definition. He walked away from a seriously meant kind of marriage vow.

"I'll be with you until you do." That little attachИ was the sole effect of her and Gunn and Wesley's little performance up on stage that night they came her after the firing. I looked and Wes and I saw the courage he was gonna show in taking on the role of leader. I saw Gunn fulfilling his role as protector and I saw all three of them carrying on. I saw them responding to Cordelia's soon to be arriving vision.

When I looked at the drunken seer, though, I saw a heart that had been neatly sheared in two.

She loves him. Not a gentle love or a pretty love or even a reasonable love, but a REAL love. Lumpy and desperate and enduring. That love was killing her...literally -killing- her. Because Angel hadn't even recognized it.

I wonder, I wonder sometime how many time people like her can give themselves so completely and get nothing back before their bank accounts go empty.

She doesn't think it'll ever happen you know. In all the time I've been alive I don't think I've ever seen something more depressing than a soul who gives up that kind of power thinking it'll never truly be accepted or even understood by the person it's offered to. And yet she loved him┘loves him. She is and was in love with him, and would have been content to be his friend┘to care for him and take whatever affection her could offer from a distance. Instead what she got was a pink slip and a goodbye without a backward glance. And that's' what's killing her.

Angel, he's trying so hard now to make it up to her but how can he? He can't even tell you the full impact of what he did?

And as for her? She chooses not to exhale. Or simply finds that it's impossible to cry.