Chapter Text
Angel groaned - he felt the metal crack and buckle beneath his sudden weight, and then a moment later the ache of the fall flooding into his body, he felt his bones shoot with pain and his muscles sing in agony. He rolled, still groaning - and caught sight of Jasmine standing on top of the bridge - a station wagon held above her head. He rolled the other way on the hood, looked through the windshield and made eye contact with the shellshocked driver. 'Run,' he said. The driver unbuckled their seat belt, flung open their door and fled - just as Jasmine threw the station wagon.
'You think the price was too high?' she yelled down at him, 'you haven't begun to pay!'
The station wagon plummeted to earth, snapping a power cable as it fell. Angel - ignoring the pain he was already in - jumped out of the way just in time. The station wagon hit the ground and exploded. Debris flew in every direction - and Angel ducked out of the way, raising his arms to shield himself from the heat of the flames from the exploding gas tank. Through the smoke and the fire and the crackling electricity flying from the power cable - Angel watched Jasmine leap from the bridge. She fell a hundred feet, her dress blowing around her in the breeze, and then landed upright - and started walking towards him without missing a step. She was menacing. Angry. 'Maybe you're right,' she yelled at him, 'maybe I can still make this world a better place…' she picked him up and then punched him in the face - sending him flying across the road. 'One body at a time.'
Angel landed beside the snapped power cable, still fizzing and sparking and jumping around like a live snake. He glanced down at it. Jasmine was coming towards him again. 'I loved this world. I sacrificed everything I was to be with you.'
'So you could rule us?' he asked - unimpressed with the depth of her sacrifice.
'Because I cared,' she retorted. 'The other Powers don't. Never really did. You know that's true, in your heart.' She grabbed him again - he snatched at the power cable. 'Shame now I gotta rip it out.'
But before she could strike another blow, he stuck her with the live end of the cable. She dropped him and was knocked back a few feet. She staggered - but recovered immediately and headed back towards him. 'I was forged in the inferno of creation, vampire. Do you really think a little electricity would destroy me?'
He shrugged. 'Worth a shot.' He punched her. It didn't make a difference. She didn't even blink. She grabbed him by the shirt front and raised him above her head, then she threw him down the road. He hit a lamp post and it snapped in two on impact, then he hit the floor, hard. He rolled over onto his front, groaning with the pain - again - and began to drag himself away, coughing up blood.
But Jasmine walked over to him and put her foot on his back - pinning him to the ground. She grabbed his hair and yanked his head back and upwards so she was looking into his face. 'Remember the prophecy, Angel? The one that says in the time of the apocalypse, you'd play a major part? How you never knew whether you'd be on the side of good or evil? Well, now you know. '
She dragged him back up from the floor and threw him against a chain link fence - holding him against it with her forearm across his neck. 'Thanks to you, this frail, little Power That Was has just enough strength in her to wipe out your whole species. And it's all on your hands.'
He pushed her away from himself and then punched her. 'This isn't my fault!' he yelled. She seized him by the throat and squeezed. 'Go to hell,' he said to her.
She chuckled. 'You first, baby.' And then she grabbed the back of his head and pulled his face towards hers, pressing their lips together, forcing him into a kiss. He struggled - but she just clamped on harder.
'Y'know…' a voice said from behind them. 'That's my daughter you're mackin' on there, bud.'
Jasmine dropped Angel and turned to look. Her father was stood there, holding onto the Groosalug's sword - like he intended to use it. Like he was going to stop her.
Angel stared across at his friend, gasping in horror and revulsion after his kiss with the decaying goddess. 'Doyle.'
Cordelia and Lorne walked through the lobby, searching. Wesley sat on the round sofa - futilely trying to shush Connor. It wasn't working - the baby was inconsolable. Gunn came down the stairs and Fred came in from the garden. 'Find anyone?' Wesley asked - his voice slightly raised so he could be heard over the screams of Connor.
'We got ourselves a ghost hotel,' Gunn told him. Up until tonight all 68 rooms had been occupied - and the lobby had been constantly packed with the devoted. But now everywhere was deserted - no sign of anyone. And all their stuff lay scattered around, abandoned.
'Garden's empty,' Fred said, 'this is incredibly creepy.'
Lorne shot her a reassuring glance, 'only in a post apocalyptic "night of the comet" kind of way.'
'Yeah …' Cordelia agreed, 'this is no big.' She frowned and picked up an abandoned purse, wondering what would have to happen to make a woman leave it behind like that. 'I'm sure everybody's just …'
'Dead,' Lorne pronounced. Cordelia and Fred both looked at him in alarm. But he was holding up the remote control and pointing it at the T.V. The screen was all blank and fuzzy. 'Dead air,' he clarified, 'T.V station's going offline. Something big went down.'
Gunn's foot hit against something, as he was going over to get a closer look at the T.V. He glanced down. It was a severed head of … something. Some kind of gnarly, nasty looking demon - who seemed to have had its lips stitched together at one point, as the fraying edges of the stitches were still embedded in its flesh. He picked it up, 'yeah - and here's its head.'
They all gathered round to look. 'Angel,' Wesley said realising.
'You sure?' Fred asked. He nodded.
Cordelia stared at the head in Gunn's hand. 'He went to that world to get Jasmine's name,' she said. 'You think this is the guy that knew it? You think he found what he was looking for?'
'I'm sure of it,' Wesley nodded. He looked at the crying baby in his arms. 'He found the name - and it somehow broke the spell. That's what happened here - the screams were people seeing Jasmine's true face … Connor crying - remember how we all felt at first? He's lost her - he has his free will back.'
'Sucks to be him right now,' Gunn said.
'Aww come on little buddy,' Lorne tweaked Connor's foot, 'it's not all bad. Sure there's a sucking void in your chest where perfect love and happiness used to be but - hey - you can now choose to ignore your pain and true feelings by drowning your sorrows in a SeaBreeze … or a big bottle of milk, I guess? It's not quite the same ...'
'So… if the whole of Los Angeles feels like Connor, right now -' Fred said, looking troubled, 'what's going on out there?'
'Whatever is happening, it can't be good,' Wesley said.
'We should get out there and help,' said Gunn, heading for the weapons cabinet.
But Cordelia shook her head, she had other ideas. 'Help people second,' she said, 'first we gotta get to Doyle. He's alone out there - we need to find him.'
'And Angel,' Wesley agreed - 'we need to get to them both before Jasmine does. We'll split into teams. Lorne - you stay here with Connor. Cordy, Gunn - grab your weapons and get tracking Doyle. She'd have put him somewhere safe but close by - where she could reach him if she needed him. Fred, you and I will look for Angel. We can't trust that the cells will be working - not if the televisions are down - so we'll do this old school. Everyone meet up here in 2 hours if they're not dead - and report progress. Lorne you're command central.'
'Aye aye cap'n.'
Lorne took hold of Connor, 'I better find myself some earplugs,' he muttered - and the others grabbed their chosen weapons from the cabinet.
'Where are we gonna even look for Doyle?' Cordelia asked.
Gunn frowned. 'You know … they called Irish the "holy father" a lot. Jasmine's a goddess.' He quirked an eyebrow. 'I reckon it might be time for us to go to church.'
'Right - good thinking - we'll do a circular search,' Cordy planned - as they headed for the front door. 'Sweep every church in a one mile diameter and then keep moving …' she stopped talking as Gunn pulled the door open and they both saw what was out there. Fred and Wesley joined them - and they too stared out, frozen.
'Oh my God,' Fred breathed.
Jasmine stared at Doyle - he stared back at her, sword in hand. 'You!' she screamed at him, incandescent with rage. 'Look at what you've caused to happen - this world - this chaos! You were never meant to be my father. I was meant to have a father who loved me!' There was pain in her voice as well, real loss - genuine sadness at having been rejected by her own father, and the memory of what was supposed to have been. 'Who would have protected me! The man I chose for my father would have given me the world … and instead I got you!'
'Yeah, well - I'm a constant disappointment to everyone, what can I say?' Doyle shrugged. For all that she was menacing him, screaming her anger and her hurt in his face, he didn't move - didn't flinch. She still couldn't hurt him - even now - not without harming herself. And they both knew it.
'You stole the world from me,' she raged, 'you ruined everything!'
He nodded - that was fair. 'I got a bad habit o' doin' that.'
'You were never meant to live!' she screamed, 'your death was foretold - aeons ago. You were supposed to gift your visions to my chosen mother in your moment of death. It was your destiny - and you failed it. You were the promised one. You were supposed to save your people, but now you've destroyed them. Your continued existence has stolen peace and happiness from everyone on the planet.' She stepped back from him and flung her arms open wide - gesturing to the madness around them. 'So take a good hard look at your accomplishment, father. Look at the world you helped to create. Good Job! Are you happy now?'
He stared at her - her rotting face, her decaying body - her arms flung wide open exposing her soft centre. 'No I'm not happy right now,' he answered, 'but give it a couple o' seconds.' He lunged forward, sword raised and plunged the blade right into her torso, driving it through her gut with all his strength, and then thrusting it upwards towards her heart. He rammed it in all the way to the hilt, so their faces were only inches apart. He stared directly into her shocked and frozen face - her mouth open in a round 'o' of surprise and pain.
'There - that feels better,' he said - and twisted the sword inside of her. She jolted and gasped in pain 'This is for everythin' you did to me,' he told her. He twisted again. 'And that's for what you did to Kali.' She shuddered again - blood began to pour from her mouth - and Doyle pulled the sword back out from her, yanking as hard as he could - trying to cause maximum pain. She screamed as the blade slid back out from between her ribs and then swayed on the spot. The blood dribbled from her mouth and flowed from her abdomen.
'Father…' she said, quietly - and then dropped to the floor. Dead.
He tilted his head to one side - and considered the body on the floor. It was already decayed and rotten - there was not much in the way of decomposition needed before she was mulch, slime and nothing at all. This former higher power - who had highjacked his body, used his hands to murder innocent people, used a whole lot more of him to rape Kali - violating him just as badly in the process, and then tossed him away like a used up cigarette packet, but not before wiping his memories: violating his mind the way she had violated his body.
And after all that - she was dead. Just like any other monster. For all her power, for all her scheming, for all her aeons of careful preparation - now she was just another carcass on the floor. She wouldn't get another crack at this world - or any other. She couldn't hurt Doyle again. As he stared down at her, he felt some of the weight he had been carrying lift from his shoulders, some of the shame and dirt he'd felt in his soul just scrub away, clean. She was nothing now. And he was still standing. He tilted his head to the other side, considering her from this different angle, 'you know,' he said, 'I was right, I kinda do feel better now.'
'We have to go out there!'
'Cordelia we can't,' Wesley told her, 'the chaos - it's not safe.'
'It's never safe! - Doyle! I can't just leave him. I've gotta find him. And I am not letting an apocalypse riot get in my way.' She moved back towards the door - but Lorne barred her passage, and Wesley grabbed hold of her shoulders and pulled her back.
'Listen, Cordy,' Gunn said to her - he was now sitting on the round sofa with Connor. The baby was still screaming. 'Irish has been in a tight spot before. He knows the score - he'll lay low until the madness dies down and then he'll come right back to us.'
'But …'
'He knows to come here,' Wesley told her, 'you have no idea where in a city of 8 million people he might be. He will get back here - in one piece. He will not be best pleased with us, however, if he finds out we lost you in the interim.'
'I think maybe the guys are right, Cordelia,' Fred said to her, 'I think maybe you should listen to 'em.'
Cordelia stared around at them in disbelief. 'We're just gonna sit here and do nothing? Our friends are out there!'
'And they both got superpowers,' Gunn told her, 'none of us do. If it's not safe for them, it sure as hell aint safe for us out there. Sit tight - and wait for Irish to come to you. Otherwise he'll get back - and have to head straight back out again to look for you. You'll be puttin' him in more danger.'
'I know you wanna help, sugar,' Lorne said softly, still blocking the door, 'I know you're too much of a hero to hide away and wait for the danger to go away, when people you love are in trouble - but in this case, I really think it is for the best.'
'Of course it is,' Wesley said. 'If Doyle is not back by dawn then we will go and look for him, Cordelia - I promise. But until then we stay put.'
She glanced towards the back door, wondering if she could make a dash for it - but Wesley saw and moved to bar that way as well. She sighed deeply and sank down on the red sofa. 'Fine,' she said, throwing up her hands. 'I'll just do nothing whilst Doyle is stuck out there and hell's come to town. 'Cause I know that's exactly what he would do if it were me … oh no wait - he wouldn't. He'd do everything he could to find me.'
'You don't have superpowers,' Wesley pointed out to her.
'It's not like he's a slayer! His powers are lame!'
'But they still give him an advantage. One you don't have - and one the people out there creating their very own apocalypse don't have, either.'
'Yeah - I just bet he's gonna complete the word jumble at them in record time. That'll protect him.'
'I think he might use his spikes before he goes to the crossword stuff,' Gunn said, giving her a pointed look. 'Plus added strength, speed, stamina,' he counted Doyle's powers off on his fingers, ' - and he can jump really far. Like a big, green cat. He'll make it back.'
'You gotta remember, Cordy,' Fred said, sitting down beside her and putting a hand on her shoulder, comfortingly, 'Doyle had been hidden from everyone. He's in a good place to just keep on hidin'. And we thought he was probably with Kali, wherever they put her. Groo went to find Kali - as best we can reckon. He can track anyone. He'll have found her - and he'll be with Doyle, now. Doyle's got himself a big, undefeated champion protector who thinks Doyle's a prophecied king - he doesn't need the human contingent of AI to keep him safe.'
Cordelia sighed again - and looked towards the door. 'I just wish I knew where he was.'
'How did you do that?' Angel staggered, struggling to keep upright after his fight. Every inch of him hurt. He was bleeding from his lip and from a nasty cut above his eye - and he knew there was going to be severe bruising when he got home and stripped his clothes off. He stared at the body on the floor - it was illuminated by the flames of the nearby exploded gas tank. They cast creeping long shadows, flickering and wavering, and bathed the whole road beneath the bridge in an orange glow. He was dumbfounded. She'd nearly killed him, and Doyle just … with the pointy end of a sword.
He looked up at his friend. 'You just stabbed her,' he said. 'I nearly died fighting her. She threw a station wagon at me! I electrocuted her with a live power cable and she walked it off. And then you - you - stick her with a sword and that's it? She's dead?'
Doyle shook his head and whistled between his teeth. 'It's all very complicated and mystical,' he told the vampire. He grinned, 'a big, dumb lunk of champ sandwich like you couldn't possibly begin to understand.'
'But she is dead?'
'Definitely dead… So ends my foray into parenthood. I'm not sure I'm cut out for it.'
'Well, maybe give it a couple of years - see if you grow up any.'
'That hasn't worked for you.'
'I'm a great dad!' He staggered again, losing his footing and nearly tumbling to the floor. 'Oh! I'm a great dad in serious, serious pain.'
Doyle caught hold of him, wrapping his arm around the vampire and draping the vampire's own arm across his shoulders - helping support his weight. 'I got you,' he said, 'I guess we should get you home - before you bleed out. Cordy'll patch you up.' They began to limp away. 'Did y' come here in the Plymouth?' Doyle asked hopefully.
'No - I came across the rooftops.'
'O'course you did… so we're really gonna walk all the way to Hollywood from Downtown. It's a good job we weren't doin' anythin' physically strenuous just now - otherwise that would have been a real bind.'
'Doyle … just get me home.'
'Will do, bud.'
It was well over an hour later when the pair of them finally staggered back through the front door of the Hyperion: Angel still bleeding and Doyle seriously out of breath.
'Oh my God - Angel!' Fred jumped to her feet and hurried over to him. Gunn came over and took Doyle's place, supporting the vampire. Doyle slipped out from under Angel's arm, relieved to have that burden lifted - and Gunn led the vampire over to the couch.
'Doyle - you're alive!'
'And you're not happy?' he asked, wearily.
'I was worried!' Cordelia wrapped her arms around him, and he sagged against her - letting her hold him up for a moment. She held him close and kissed him everywhere she could reach.
'It's all gonna be OK, now,' he told her.
'What happened to you guys?' Fred asked - looking between the two returned but exhausted warriors.
'Jasmine's dead,' Angel told them, 'I brought back her name and her powers were destroyed. Doyle killed her.' He frowned. 'What's wrong with Connor?' he asked - looking over at the squalling child.
Wesley picked him up and brought him over. 'We guessed as much about Jasmine's power when Connor started to cry. It's been like this for hours now. We can't get him to stop, Angel - we've tried everything, I'm sorry but …'
Angel reached out his arms for his son and then wrapped them around the baby, holding him close. Connor stopped crying at once - and Angel smiled down at him in delight, 'yeah - that's my big guy.' He looked back up - and saw the stricken and heartbroken look on Wesley's face. The realisation that it took nothing but Connor's true father to heal the baby's heart. That Wesley was not - and never would be - a match for the real deal. 'Thanks, Wes,' he said to the watcher, quietly. 'Thanks for caring for him whilst we were on the run. It means a lot to me know that - if anything ever happens to me - Connor's always got someone else who loves him as much as I do, who will be a real father to him - love him like his own son.'
'Connor has many people who will love him like their own,' Wesley said - struggling to keep his voice even, struggling to keep that upper lip stiff - as he was touched by the realisation that this was Angel's way of telling him he was finally fully forgiven for the previous year. They had moved on - Wesley was back in the fold and Angel really did trust him with Connor, again. Angel smiled - and looked around the lobby: at Fred and Gunn standing close by, at Lorne propping up the counter - a SeaBreeze in hand, at Cordy and Doyle wrapped up in each other's arms - the way they were always supposed to be, and at Wesley - who could always be depended upon to do whatever it took to protect the people he loved. No matter how hard.
'We're a family,' Angel said to them all, 'we all look out for each other, we all belong to each other - and this time things really are …'
'Back the way their supposed to be?' A woman's voice cut in. They all turned to look. Lilah was leaning against the door frame of the back door - she looked very different to the last time they had seen her - when she had been grimy and bleeding and wearing weeks old clothes. Now she was clean and slick and smart, and dressed head to toe in designer labels. She smiled at them - her old shark's smile they all knew so well. 'I wouldn't break out the balloons and streamers just yet. There's a debt to be paid, Wonder Bread - and today's collection day.'