Delivering the News (for queen_c_tm)

She drove for once, since this was mostly her planning, Wesley in the passenger seat. Some sort of radio station filled in the rest of the car with them.

Her destination wasn't so far from Focus, but up until now not a single person knew about it. It was a much smaller medical complex, full of low, squat buildings that mostly belonged to single practices. Everything was sort of frayed at the edges, and most businesses seemed to be struggling. But the rent had been good.

It was where Fred kept her lab. And no one knew about it, not even Lorne. But the more she'd started taking on clients at Focus, the more she missed the old-new tools at her disposal. The feeling of belonging that alays came from wearing her coat. That she could get that feeling, even in Wolfram and Hart. She'd forgotten how much she missed the science of things.

The equipment had been collected bit by bit, some of it secondhand, some of it new and make her knees weak expensive. It wasn't even close to what she had at Wolfram and Hart. But it was more than enough to help Cordy. An electron microscope or two, for starters. The more complicated things had been a bit harder to get a hold of, and required a bit of hacking into medical databases, but it wasn't like working with Angel hadn't dulled the senses a bit, when it came to breaking the law.

Fred lost a day, she was pretty sure. It was almost dark when they went in, and it was just as dark when they left, only with a later sense to it. A whole twenty four hour's worth of later. Wesley on the microscrope, studying the fluid and blood taken from the embroscopy for any visible abberations, and Fred with every other test she could think of. It wasn't that she didn't trust Cordy's doctors, it just got into the wanting to know. And wanting her to be ok. And suddenly wanting the things she wanted for her, all at once. So all the energy went into there, into the lab. And the tests.

It took the last bit of DNA to clear things up. A few things were off, but they were the few things that were off in Cordy too, little bands and bars of color that made her different, and stand out more than she already did. More parts of the whole that sometimes awed Fred about her friend. And it was new learnings on just what Cordy had gone through to keep those visions that were so important to her. But she was still her, and this was still this. The paper crumpled a bit at the corner in her hands, and Fred was sure she must've hugged Wesley because that's what you do. She was rather reckless in it actually, considering she just paid off that new microscope. It stayed though, and didn't fall over. Fred liked it when things didn't fall.

With the working from one day to the next, Fred was aware of just how long she'd kept him away from his own work. Not that he cared, or it mattered in that way, because it was Cordy. But then Fred asked if she could tell her. Something girl to girl and just that much more to recement their friendship here. He'd nodded, and understood, and she dropped him off at his house before heading over to Cordy's. With a small stop along the way.

Very, very small.

A hour later Fred was ringing Cordy's bell, that very, very small yellow bear in hand.