Chapter Text
Angel lay on the table top; he had been covered with a blanket - and another one was folded beneath his head, acting like a pillow - but he was still so cold. 'Why is it like this?' he asked Lorne.
The anagogic demon stood beside him, looking down at him, holding his ever present Sea Breeze. 'Well that's the age old question,' he answered, 'I'll fire you off a postcard if I ever noodle the answer.'
'Life should be beautiful and bright,' Angel said, 'But no matter how hard I try - everything I touch - turns to ashes.'
Doyle watched on, as the prone vampire ranted and raved to himself. He was still delirious - the pig's blood did not seem to have done him much good, and the Irishman was worried that they were too late to save his higher brain functions. They were now looking at an eternity of having a damaged vampire on their hands - like in the alternate timeline Skip had sent him to, on his birthday. But in this case, the damage was wrought by starvation - and not the visions. Doyle frowned deeper and deliberately turned his mind away from the visions - or his lack thereof.
His dark thoughts were interrupted by Wesley coming back down the stairs, 'how is he doing?' the watcher asked.
'How do you think?' Angel heard Lorne reply.
'He's not lookin' so hot,' Doyle replied, 'he keeps on talking - nonsense - I think he's still delirious.'
'I have to stop him - have to find him,' Angel gasped.
Wesley took a step closer to him, 'Angel?' he said - his voice loud and clear, hoping to cut through the vampire's delirium.
'I have to do it…'
The two men glanced at each other, in concern, and then looked back at Angel. He was trying to rise up off the table, but he was so weak he was not having much luck. 'Shh, you have to rest now,' Wesley told him, pressing down on his shoulder to keep him in place.
'Hush little baby don't say a word,' Lorne sang, 'mama's gonna buy you a mockingbird. And if that mockingbird don't sing…'
Angel looked up at the man holding him down on the table, his vision was blurry - but he could just make him out: Holtz. 'I should have killed you,' he said to the vampire hunter.
'Angel, bud…' Doyle began to say, but Wesley just shook his head - unperturbed by the vampire's death threat.
'He's been down there too long,' he said, 'pig's blood isn't enough - he needs more substantial nourishment.' He pulled out a switchblade - and looked across at Doyle.
The half demon sighed, and began to roll up his sleeve. 'It's bad enough I had to go swimmin' to find him - now I gotta bleed from a vein for him, as well?'
But Wesley only chuckled, grimly, 'not this time, Doyle. He doesn't need demon blood - he needs pure, unadulterated human.'
'Oh,' Doyle's expression was a complicated mixture of relief - and being put out that he wasn't human enough to feed a vampire. He rolled his sleeve back down again, and Wesley cut himself with the knife. He sliced against the inner side of his forearm and then held the cut to Angel's lips.
Angel's hands came up and gripped Wesley's arms - and he drank, thirstily.
Lilah stood alone in the boardroom, behind the chair at the head of the table. She ran her hands along the leather of the chair's headrest - but when the door opened, she quickly moved away, and took a seat more towards the centre of the table.
All the other attorneys filed in and took their seats. Gavin sat near the top of the table - and Linwood took the chair right at the head. 'Alright, we've got a lot of ground to cover,' their boss said, 'so let's get right to it. But first, let's talk about Lilah.' Everyone turned to look at her. Gavin smirked. She stared back at them all. 'Everyone had a chance to view her file?' Linwood asked. There were nods all round. 'Good - recommendations?'
'I think her record speaks for itself,' Gavin said. The real estate weasel was practically squirming with delight.
'Volumes,' Linwood agreed with him. 'Your failures at Wolfram and Hart outstrip your successes by an uncomfortable margin. Perhaps you would fair better at one of the less central offices?'
'A third world dimension maybe,' Gavin supplied.
'I'm sorry,' Lilah said - her voice quiet, yet it didn't really sound like an apology.
'What was that?' Linwood asked her.
'I'm sorry,' she said again - and then stood up, and looked around at everyone - before settling her eyes directly on Linwood. 'I've made mistakes,' she said, 'but fear was never one of them.'
'Is there something you would like to share?'
Her boss aimed to sound condescending - but she wasn't going to be talked down to. 'Why haven't we been out looking for the vampire's child?' she asked, 'captured and contained him? You can rest assured Angel's people are looking for him.'
'We're assessing the situation,' Linwood told her.
'In the same way we're assessing Angel's situation?' she sneered, 'then why aren't we trying to pinpoint his location?'
'Lilah this is my corner of the sky.' He was sounding angry now. 'I decide when the sun rises and when it sets. Lack of long-term vision has always been one of your shortcomings.'
She picked up a palm pilot and stylus from the table - and then looked back at the older attorney. 'And lack of courage has always been one of yours,' she replied. 'You're afraid of Angel and his son. And that's the reason for your daring strategy of "wait and see" isn't it? You're afraid, and fear breeds weakness.'
Linwood put a mocking hand to his heart, 'Oh, I'm hurt,' he said, 'is that really what you think of me?'
She stood a little taller. 'Yes,' she told him, 'and Mr. Suvarta agrees with me.'
'You spoke to a Senior Partner?' The mocking tone was gone now - and was replaced by one of outrage - and fear.
'He was really very helpful,' she smiled, 'had some great hints on office furniture.'
'This is outrageous!' His face was actually beginning to turn purple with rage. 'Are you actually telling me you went over my head?'
Lilah touched her stylus to the screen of her palm pilot. There was an electronic beep - and then a blade whipped out from the backrest of Linwood's chair. It sliced quickly and neatly right through his flesh, and then hit the leather. 'Just under it, actually,' Lilah smiled.
There was a still moment, whilst Linwood's head held in place - his pop eyed expression of shock frozen in death - and then his head fell from his shoulders and rolled down the table, with a thump. All the other attorneys flinched. Lilah smiled. 'Mr. Suvarta didn't think Linwood's sky was sunny enough,' she told them. 'You're all reporting to me now.' She sat down, 'get out.'
They jumped to their feet and silently began to file from the room. 'Oh - Gavin?' she said. Gavin froze - and turned back to look at her, fear plainly etched on his face. That made her feel all warm inside. She pointed her stylus at the decapitated head. 'Please remove that,' she said to him.
The front doors to the hotel opened, and Wesley and Doyle came in - supporting Angel between them. 'I believe you're looking for this?' Wesley said to the team. There was a moment of silence - and then Fred, Gunn and Cordy all rushed towards their boss.
'Careful,' the watcher warned them, holding up the three man procession to keep back from the team, 'he is still very weak, he isn't yet up to a touching reunion.'
'Let's just get him to the sofa,' Doyle suggested.
He and Wesley began to drag the vampire in that direction, but Cordelia stood her ground. 'I'll take him,' she said, 'get out of my way.'
There was a moment, as Cordy and Doyle stared into each other eyes. So much - and so little - passed between them, and Doyle found he was holding his breath. Then, he shrugged - and broke the spell. 'Fine.' He wriggled out from under Angel's arm and Cordelia took his place. She led Angel and Wesley down the steps and towards the sofa, whilst the Irishman - no longer needed - hovered, awkwardly, by the door.
'Oh my God,' Fred breathed - as she stared at the shambling wreck that was Angel, taking in the pallor of his face, and the deep cracks that dehydration had carved into his skin. His eyes were blank, and he was still mumbling incoherently. When she had worried about what being trapped under the ocean would be like for a vampire, she had not thought about the physical changes it would bring. Clearly, it had been harder on him than she had feared.
'Is he gonna be OK?' Gunn asked, he too was shocked by Angel's appearance - shocked at how weak he seemed.
'In time, maybe,' Wesley replied, as he and Cordy deposited Angel on the round couch. Angel leaned his head back against the headrest and closed his eyes, groaning.
'He'll be fine,' Cordelia assured everyone, her voice brittle - but her eyes were shining with tears.
Doyle felt a lurch in his stomach, he remembered when that tight voice and those tears were brought about by his own injuries - when it had been him she worried for, because it was him she loved. The brisk voice hid her deep concern - whilst her unshed tears belied it. She loved Angel now - he could see it in the way she treated the vampire the way she had once treated him. He looked down at his shoes, and tried to blink back his own tears of grief.
Fred and Gunn were still staring in horror. 'Oh God,' Fred repeated.
'It's OK,' her boyfriend tried to reassure her.
'But look at him!'
'It's gonna be OK.' Cordy and Wesley had both said it would be - so it had to be.
'Guy's shut up!' Cordelia admonished, she sat beside Angel and stroked his brow, looking into his eyes. Then she turned back to Wesley, 'How did you find him?'
'I tracked down Holtz and Justine - Justine told me roughly the coordinates of where they dumped him at sea. I've been out searching every night, since.'
'But how did you get him?'
Wesley glanced across at Doyle, 'Doyle volunteered to go down - he was the one that found him and attached the ship's hoist to the casket Angel was kept in.' He decided to keep Justine's role as slave girl out of the story.
Cordelia met Doyle's eyes again. 'Thank you,' she whispered.
He could think of nothing to say to that, so he lowered his gaze and looked at his shoes again. 'We should go,' he mumbled to Wesley, 'they don't need us, now.'
'Wait!' Cordelia stopped them from leaving, 'what about Holtz and Justine?'
'Holtz is dead,' Wesley told her, 'and Justine is no longer a threat.'
'And Connor?'
'Missing.' That one word hurt his heart more than he could bear.
'We need to find him,' Cordelia murmured, looking back at Angel.
'We need to help Angel, first,' Gunn told her. 'What do we do?'
'You need to feed him,' Wesley said, 'and I'm afraid pig's blood won't cut it. We fed him on the boat, but he needs more - and I'm all out - come on, Doyle.'
The two men turned to leave, Cordelia watched them go. 'I know it's been a long night,' the Irishman was saying, as they walked out of the door, 'but we still gotta take care of the giant bird demon I saw in my vision.'
The door swung shut behind them. Angel groaned. 'Gunn!' Cordelia's voice was sharp and commanding, 'go fetch me a sharp knife.' The street fighter went to the weapons cabinet and selected a dagger, whilst Cordelia stroked Angel's hair soothingly. 'It's OK, sweetie,' she murmured, 'we're gonna make you all better.'
'Here you go,' Gunn handed her the dagger, and she took it from him - placing the blade against the skin of her forearm. Unknowingly mirroring Wesley, she sliced into her arm and then held the cut to Angel's lips. 'You need to drink,' she said to him, 'here.' Then she turned to the others, 'he's freezing - fetch more blankets.' The young couple ran off to find blankets to cover him with, and Cordelia and Angel were left alone.
She pressed her bleeding arm right up to his mouth, and at first he sucked at her wound, hungrily. He drank and drank, and his face morphed into his vampiric features - he bit down harder, and Cordy cried out.
The sound of her pain brought Angel to his senses, the way nothing else had. The demon melted from his face, and he threw her arm away from himself in horror. It was like his hallucination - all over again, but the warmth in his belly told him this time it was real. 'Cordy! No!'
But she pressed her arm back at him. 'You need to drink some more,' she told him, 'you have to.'
'I can't.'
'You must, please - drink.' She held her arm to his lips again, and he was too weak to fight her. He felt the rich warmth of her blood flow into his mouth - more delicious than anything he ever remembered tasting. Cordelia closed her eyes, as she felt her head go light and dizzy.
'Cordelia - stop.' Fred's voice cut through the room. She had returned with the blankets.
But Cordelia kept her arm in place, 'he needs … he needs … more…' her voice was slurring.
'Charles!' Fred called for her boyfriend - and Gunn appeared.
In an instant, he was at Cordy's side - and lifted her away from the vampire. 'Damn girl, you can't give him three months worth of blood all by yourself. You crazy?'
Angel fell back against the round sofa - and groaned - missing the nourishment that Cordelia had given him, as soon as it was lost. Gunn carried Cordy across to the sofa outside the office, and lay her down there. Her eyes were shut. 'Fred - see to her,' he told his girlfriend, 'patch her up and keep her still… damn!' He went back to Angel, still shaking his head, and began to wrap the vampire in the blankets he and Fred had brought down.
'How're you doing, man?' he asked, as he tucked the blankets around his boss, 'you feeling better?'
'I'm sorry,' Angel moaned. 'Tell Cordy I didn't want … didn't meant to...'
'It's OK, man,' Gunn glanced back across at where the two women were, Fred working away at fixing up Cordelia. 'Cordy does what she wants to, you know that, aint no getting through to her.' He straightened up, 'now I'm gonna ring around, see if I can find a butcher's shop that delivers.'
'Explain again what you saw,' Wesley said. They were back at his apartment. Justine had disappeared - her neck shackle still dangled, on its chain, from the ceiling, and the bars of her cage were pushed back. Doyle kept staring at the closet - he couldn't keep his eyes from it - couldn't stop feeling sick at the thought of her imprisoned in there, all these months.
'Umm…' he shook his head and tried to snap out of his horrified reverie. 'What?'
'Your vision of the demon - what did you see.'
'Oh - right.' One of the other things he was worrying about, one of the other secrets he was keeping. 'I was out - patrolling - when it hit me. I saw this big scaly thing, with a beak, snacking on a woman - just off Skid Row. So I went there - saved her - shot the demon. But then it flew away. It's still out there … and it eats people.'
'Hmmm,' Wesley got up and went to consult his books. Doyle stared at the empty cage again. 'Is this what you saw?' the watcher had arrived back, holding a book open to show an illustration; snapping Doyle out of his thoughts, once more.
The Irishman tore his eyes away from the hanging shackle and looked at the picture. 'Uh - yeah - that's it - what is it?'
'Vae daemonium avem,' Wesley told him, 'European in origin - maybe check the database to find out where such a creature might live in Los Angeles.'
Doyle nodded and headed over to Wesley's laptop. He began to type into the search bar.
'We did good work tonight,' Wesley said, after a long moment. 'Thank you - for being there, for going down to find Angel.'
'It's … it's nothing,' he mumbled in reply, 'don't mention it.'
'We can't put right what we did,' the watcher continued, 'can't make the people we love forgive us - get back what we lost.'
Doyle thought of Cordelia - and the way she had looked at Angel, and the way she had looked at himself. He hung his head. 'No,' he agreed.
'But you are right when you say we can still atone - make amends to the universe, if not to our family.'
'Right.'
'And once we've finished killing this bird demon - we will get straight onto hunting down Connor. Have you found anything?'
The database beeped - and the information came up. 'There's a nest in Echo Park,' Doyle told him.
Wesley nodded, 'alright - let's get to work.'
Cordelia woke up on the sofa, her head felt light and her arm was sore. She remembered. 'Angel!' she tried to sit up, but the dizziness and nausea forced her back down again. He was home, he was safe, he would be alright. And it was Wesley and Doyle who had brought him back - not her. For all her furious detective work, over the summer - it was the two betrayers - the snakes in the grass - who had found him, in the end.
She groaned and brought her hand up to her swimming head. Doyle. He had swum down to the bottom of the ocean - and hauled Angel out. She thought back to her harsh words about him, earlier that evening - that, if he had any inkling where the vampire was, he would be rushing to tell them; trying to weasel his way back inside the family. But he hadn't. He had merely got on with the job; found Angel; brought him back - and left. Not asked for thanks. Not asked for forgiveness.
And then he and Wesley had gone to fight some monster from a vision. He was still fighting the good fight. Separately - without looking for approval from her. She had told him to get lost - and he had done. He had moved on. Good, she thought to herself. That was good. She didn't need him pining after her for the rest of their lives, didn't want him …
He had brought back Angel - and left. And now they could all get on with their lives. Her and Angel. And Doyle - by himself. That was all that mattered. That was what was for the best. She groaned again.
'Cordy, you awake?' She heard Fred speak to her from somewhere above. She groaned in response. 'I got you some water and an iron tablet,' Fred said to her, 'you should take it - to try and restore…'
Cordelia struggled to an upright position - but again she had to bring her head up to her hand, as a wave of nausea overtook her. Once she was stable, again, she held out her hand - and took the water and tablet. 'How is he?' she asked.
'Charles got him up to a room on the next floor,' Fred told her, 'he couldn't make it up to Angel's own room - we never fixed the elevator after Connor was born. The local butcher delivered some pig's blood - we fed him - he seems to be doing better.'
'Pig's blood isn't good enough,' Cordelia said, 'he needs…'
'He took a whole load of yours, Cordy,' Fred told her, 'and he fed off Wesley already. He's stronger. Animal blood will do him for now.'
'I need to go to him,' she swung her legs down to the floor - and her whole world tilted on its axis, she reeled. 'Help me?' she asked. Fred sighed, and helped her up, and then supported her up the stairs.
Angel was lying on the bed in Cordelia's old room. As she went in and sat down beside him, she tried not to think about how close they were to Doyle's room - and all the memories that room held for her. 'Hey,' she said, gripping his hand.
'Cordelia,' his voice was soft - but his eyes were focused, now. 'You shouldn't have fed me.'
'How could I not…' there was a pause, 'do you feel stronger?'
'A little.'
'Then it was the right thing to do.' She gripped his hand, and then felt the dam break inside of her - and she began to cry. 'Angel - I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry I couldn't find you. We were trying - all summer we followed one lead after another. But we were still so far away - and it was Wes that found you. If he hadn't … who knows how much longer…' she rested her head on his chest, and wept.
'Shh shh,' he stroked her hair. 'It doesn't matter - I'm back - that's all that counts. And I'll be fine.' He held her close. Her warmth, her weight - it was like a balm to his wounded soul.
'But all you've been through - trapped down there - Angel…'
'You know it wasn't so bad,' he told her, still gripping her tightly, 'I saw some fish, went mad with hunger, hallucinated a whole bunch. But it gave me time to think - see things from a different perspective.' He frowned, 'kind of a M.C. Escher perspective - but still…'
Cordelia raised her head from his chest to look at him; he felt the cold, immediately. 'Not that bad?' she asked, 'how can you say that?'
'One summer, I spent one hundred years in a hell dimension - sent there by my own girlfriend,' he pointed out, 'three months under the sea doesn't really compare.'
Cordelia lay her head back down, and he smiled with relief. 'That's you,' she gave a watery chuckle, 'unflappable old Joe stoic.'
'You think I'm old?'
'You had a bicentennial!'
'Yeah - but - I'm young at heart, right? And that's what counts?'
She flung her arm around him and hugged him fiercely. 'Oh God, Angel I missed you so much!'
'Likewise,' he said, 'you know - that's what I thought about down there,' he told her. 'You, me - the world.'
She raised her head, slightly - to look at him again. 'What about it?'
He sighed, 'nothing in this world is the way it's supposed to be,' he explained, 'it's harsh and cruel … but then that's why there's people like us - champions. It doesn't matter where we've come from, what we've done, or suffered - or even if we make a difference. We live as though the world is what it should be - to show it what it can be. My best friends betrayed me, and it hurt me more than I could have thought possible. And then they found me - and restored me to you. Up is down, black is white. The earth keeps turning - and the only thing that seems to make any sense to me … is us.'
They lay together, holding each other - for a long time. 'Cordelia?' Angel whispered into the dark, just as she was falling asleep. 'We need to find Connor.'
In the mountains of Utah, Sister Assumpta did her rounds - checking on the sleeping children. She stopped off in the nursery - where the children under three slept. It was quiet in there - the orphaned and abandoned babies were all asleep, though she knew many would wake in the night - and cry out for a mother who would never come.
She stopped at the last crib in the room, their newest addition, and the youngest child in the home. A baby boy - less than a year old - abandoned on a church doorstep two months ago. No one knew where he had come from, or even what his name was. But he was a bonny boy - big and healthy and happy. He kicked his legs in his sleep - and she tweaked his toes, smiling down. 'Night night, little angel,' she said to him, 'God bless and keep you - and may he bless and keep your parents too - wherever they may be.'