Until Sun Light Falls
by Elektra

Disclaimer: Joss and company owns all rights and everything. I own nothing and accept nothing except the wonder of feedback

        He came to hate the dark. The twisted closed space of darkness held him a prisoner as if ropes bound him. Yet the darkness meant life, became the very thing to which he clung to find solace, to find safety. As the shroud of night fell over him he felt its hidden cloak wrap over and around him. And he saw it as his curse, his death cloth.

        The curtains rippled, shifting as the surface of a lake might under the influence of the wind. The gentle drift of light filtered into the room and he longed for the shades to be pulled open. But she sat in the corner of the room, quiet, still, watching him. His gaze did not falter as he stared at the sway of the curtains, the dance of the shadows across the walls. He never looked at her. He couldn't.

        He was to blame. All at once and not at all.

        A breath trembled, broke and fractured the silence between them.

        He glanced to her. Her eyes hadn't left him, her focus steady, unfailing. The strength possessed there had always surprised him. And now, in the end days, she never flinched or left his side. She kept to the shadowed part of the room as if the vision of her might inflict some pain, some haunted memory on him. Squeezing his eyes closed, he clenched the blanket and forced the images away.

        The creak of her chair, the soft step, the tender caress of her hand on his brow, brought him to look at her standing at his bed side. She asked if he needed anything, anything at all.

        He cursed the light, came to hate the weakening of his eyesight. Though all he need do was to close his eyes to see her. She remained always the same. Her weight burdened the bed and he reached to her. She grasped his hand and brought it to her mouth. Soft, sweet and deadly.

        He whispered her name. He needed to apologize. To give her that much before death took him. And as he started, she placed her finger on his mouth and shook her head. Fate had brought them to this point. She told him that once, long ago. Spoke those words to him when he could not let her go, could not let death take her.

        Yet she was stronger than he was. She watched, guarded him over the years. The frailty of his existence became her definition. She touched his cheek and her hand glided over the aged, wrinkled skin. The human skin.

        "Cordelia." He whispered her name in tones to pull her out of the darkness to which he had condemned her. He needed to apologize again. Just once, this last time.

        She shook her head and clutched his hand. "No, Angel, no."

        Her hand held no heat, seemed to drain the heat from his own. She reached to his brow and leaned down to kiss him. A caress of pure darkness, a caress of the demon. He shivered as her weight lay upon him. As he recalled, saw her dying form. Remember the heat of her blood pouring, gushing into his mouth. The thrill, the exhilaration of her life breathing into his undead body.

        The memory of her mouth upon his echoed as he split open his lip to allow her to drink. And as she died, as his Cordelia inhaled her last breath, he cradled her. Embraced in his arms, she shuddered and died to live again.

        And as the dark enveloped her, it released him.

        And he took his first breath in more than two hundred years.

The rays of day rained in through the window. As he gathered the strength to stand, he felt her hand on his arm. Her presence, her substance became more than a crutch, more than the meaning of his life. Like she had all those years ago when she nursed his broken and bruised body, she gave him the support he needed. Nodding, he stretched out a hand and gripped her arm. She ignored the tremor, glossed over the translucence of his aged skin. With care, she escorted him to the window but could not join him to watch his final sunset.

        A day like this. It amazed him still how the most macabre of days began so innocently. And ended so grimly and with such finality he gasped for breath even as he thought of it...

        She was in his arms, her body quaking under the encumbrance of pain. Her ribs had been crushed, the breaths she fought for were ragged and fruitless. How had it come to this? He wiped away the hair from her eyes and gazed down at her. It blinded her, the things they had done, the inflicted torture. He pulled her close to his chest and wished his heart beat if only to comfort her. He needed to get her to safety, needed to get someone, anyone to tend to her extensive wounds.

        But the daylight hampered him. The light streamed around him as they crouched beneath the rocks of the desert. After he found her, saved her from them, he searched for and secured a cave. They huddled there, together as dawn burnt away the last of the dark embers of night. Yet he knew, understood she would not last the day.

        Trapped.

        Helpless.

        They came for him, the warriors. Transforming the night like a band of killer crows, they appeared at the hotel. Converging, circling, surrounding them, the warriors fanned out and overwhelmed every defense he had. They called themselves the Warriors of the Sun, the righteous. They hunted him and those who assisted his insidious cause.

        His cause. Redemption.

        To them there could be no redemption for a demon, even for a demon with a soul. They took everything he held dear, ripped it from him and left him battered in the middle of the hotel. Blood soaked his shirt, blinded his eyes. Stab wounds riddled his torso, knives impaled his legs, his feet. Yet he thought only of her screams as they dragged her away from him. Her pleas for him to help her.

        The black veiled warriors turned to him and whispered, "She will be sacrificed to sever your ties to the Powers that Be."

        Staggering to his feet, he stumbled after them but bows were raised and he was helpless.

        Helpless.

        She trembled in his embrace, her eyes flittering open and then dropping closed again. He glanced at the accursed sunlight outside the sanctity of the cavern. He went to the periphery of the shadow and blinked in the harsh light. It seared his eyes and he automatically jumped back.

        His safety meant her death. His redemption meant her death.

        She reached out and called to him. He could not deny her and was at her side. Gathering her to him, he rocked her and hushed her moans.

        "Cold," she murmured. "I'm so cold."

        And he damned himself again, for he could provide no heat for her. He shunned himself from looking at the wounds covering her body. A sacrifice. The blood of his seer to clean the Powers that Be of his contamination.

        "I'm sorry, sorry," he choked on the words but needed to say them. Tears betrayed him and he clutched her close to his chest. "No, Cordelia, please." The tears marking his face mixed with the blood staining hers. In that instance, he realized it. And spoke it, "I can't do this. I can't lose you. I need you." His lips found her forehead and he gave her a chaste kiss. "I can't let you die."

        She struggled to speak but the words were crumbling in her pain. He thought he heard her say it wasn't his fault. Fate brought them to this point.

        "No, no, I won't except it." He curled his arms around her, glaring at the profanity of the sun. "I need you more now than ever." And his lips touched her forehead again, drifted to the weakening pulse at her neck.

        And the change came all too easily. The glory of blood in his mouth, the delirium of her life's breath in his throat filled him. The warmth spreading over his tongue, down his throat drowned out any thoughts, any doubts in a great tidal wave of sheer pleasure.

        Tugging his fanged teeth from her neck, he cut his own lip and pressed her lips upon his own.

        The deepest kiss, the kiss of death to steal her breath. In that moment, a certain silence pervaded, seeped into his mind. She fell from him, dropped into the vortex of the demon's embrace.

        A kiss. The vulturous kiss of a demon prince to awaken the sleeping princess. And it was finished. In only a moment, a second without thought, he saved her and damned her.

The sun light faded, fell as his eyesight drained and dissipated. Reaching out, he found not the bed post he sought, but her arm to guide him back to the bed. She edged him to the bed, to the comfort of the soft blankets, the quilts. Her hands moved over him like she performed a sacred ritual, carefully lying his debilitated aged body upon the mattress, covering his shivering form with blankets. She clasped his hand with her own, holding tight as he had done all those years ago.

        He remembered his own hands that day, how they shook as he gently, tenderly placed her inert form on the floor of the cave. He hesitated as he checked and realized she had no breath, she was dead. Gone by his own hand. Pausing, he didn't touch her as she lay in some pure last repose. He realized then it would be her last sleep, her last slumber before she arose a soulless demon.

        Soulless.

        It grasped inside his chest, tugged, ripped, clawed at him. The insanity of losing her made it seem justified, even inevitable. And he repeated it again, "I can't lose you." He cursed and looked into the blackness of the cave away from the ever present day. "Not you, Cordelia. I can't." An apology suffocated in his throat as he recalled the last taste of her.

        He gagged. "Oh God, God." Crawling away from her, the profundity pounded in his ears. He'd killed her. He did as the Warriors of the Sun had wanted. Taken his link to the Powers that Be and severed it. With a finality he could not have imagined.

        "God," he whispered. He glanced at her silent form, her face seemed paler still. A pressure built, grew until it overtook his senses and he screamed, yelled out not in a human voice but something more animalistic, more savage. Curling into a ball, he rocked as he covered his face with his hands but knew he couldn't hide from the truth.

        Truth.

        He had to kill her again. Stake her.

        It gripped his throat. The truth. It tightened the vessels, constricted his muscles and he coughed for breath.

        For breath. It came to him then. The thud, the warmth spreading over his arms and legs. The heat that flushed his face. The rise and fall, rise and fall of his chest.

        "I'm alive." He stared down at his body.

        The truth. It ravaged him. He scrambled to her side, gathered her to his chest. Her blood, her sacrifice gave him life. And his blood killed her.

        "Not like this," he murmured into the silk of her hair. "No, I don't – I don't want it this way. Not like this." He was on his feet, racing out to the canyon, the desert.

        The white light of the sun burned his weak eyes, but he gaze directly into its damned fire. "Not like this! No! I don't want it like this, not for her. Take it back. Take it back." He dropped to his knees, repeating over and again in a litany, a prayer, the last words. "Take it back, take it back. Please, please, take it back."

        He knelt in the heat of the sun without moving until the sun light fell. With the weight of over two hundred years, he climbed to his feet and went back into the cave. Her tomb. He understood what he needed to do. What he had to do. There was no other choice. Resolved, he settled on the cave floor next to her and watched as the hours past.

        It came to her, the demon, as it always did to its victims. She startled awake, trying for a breath but not needing it. Her eyes glared at him, confused and pained all at once. In a flash her eyes flickered to amber and then darkened again. She opened her mouth to speak but as if struck mute sat still for a moment.

        She looked at him in that paralyzing second and said, "I can hear your heart beat. I can smell your blood." She narrowed her eyes as if trying to puzzle out the confusion. She twitched her shoulders and wrapped her arms around herself. "What? What?"

        The heaviness of her pain, her birth, her death stole the words from him and he only moved his lips in silent explanation.

        "I was dying. Dying." She closed her eyes, quietly, as if to replay the event. "Dying and you." Putting her fingers to her mouth, she recalled, "You – I — drank. We drank." She swallowed and he saw how she savored the moment.

        He bit back his reply and instead said, "I'm, I'm sorry. I couldn't lose you." The inadequacy of the words appalled him and he rend his hair.

        "We drank," she repeated and, with a new grace, rose from the floor of the cave. As if called by the darkness of night, she left him and entered her new world. Though his senses were limited, he knew, remembered the fragrances, the vibrations, the illuminations she witnessed. But he could not follow her for he knew, understood the implications of those new sensations. The demon, his demon now imprisoned her.

        He wished for the darkness to engulf him, devour him. Yet it had. For over two centuries it incarcerated him, still he only begged for it to take him again. To release the soul that plagued him even in his human form.

        Peering up at her as she entered their hiding place, he saw something more and less. He saw his salvation, his damnation. Fumbling to his feet in his rush to her, he grasped her by both arms and shook her. "Take me. Turn me back." He searched her face, hoping to find the same need there. "You don't have to be alone in this. I'm human again but I don't want to be, not like this. Take me, turn me. I can be with you, forever. Eternally. Turn me back."

        Her eyes widened and in muted wonder she smiled.

        His fingers pressed into her cool flesh and the impotence of being human burned the blood pumping in his arteries. "Turn me back. Now."

        "Turn you back and unleash Angelus on the world?" The curve of her lips mocked him. "You'd lose your soul."

        The lilt to her voice grated him and he snarled, "What the hell do you care? You're a soulless demon. Turn me back."

        His words, his tone did not move her. She only tilted her head and, knowingly, asked, "Am I?"

In the passing light, he laid and searched the quiet room for her. As he strained to see her, to focus his last sight upon her, she inched closer and slid onto the bed with him. Her hands, though they held no warm, soothed him, comforted him in these moments of refuge and fear. The questions rose up, like licks of flames from a bed of fire. They consumed him and he shuddered. She moved him, to rest his head upon her knee. Softly, smoothly her hand glided down the bone of his jaw. She knew, as she always had.

        Even the creaking of the door did not disturb him as he lay subdued upon her. He recognized the tap of the footfalls before he saw Wesley ease down in the rocking chair next to his bed. Wesley said nothing to Cordelia, they rarely spoke at all.

        "Tea," Wesley said and pointed to the tray he'd placed on the night stand next to the bed. With slow methodological movements, his friend poured him his last drink. Her hands braced him and held the cup to his lips as he tried to sip. The warmth suffused down his throat and his gaze met Wesley's, witnessed Wesley's as the man glanced at the ageless woman. As the years transformed them, she remained always the same as they had seen her that last day so long ago.....


        "I have it here," Wesley said as he crouched over a large tome, his shoulders bunched up. His nose nearly pressed to the dried page as he skimmed the lines of ancient text in the lobby of the darkening hotel.

        "What? Anything?" He limped over to the ex-Watcher's side but his eyes found the clock again. How many hours had past since the Warriors of the Sun took Cordelia. His Cordelia. Claws ripped as his soul as he pictured what they might do to her. He contained the need to knock Wesley out of the way and examine the text himself. Opening and closing his fists, he asked, "What does it say? Any clue as to who these Warriors of the Sun are? Where they are?"

        "Let me just cross reference this with..." And he reached for another volume, but Angel slapped it out of his hand.

        "Just tell me Wesley, now!"

        Straightening his shoulders and, with a curt nod, Wesley stated, "If you wish, then I will but remember I haven't had the time to confirm anything I'm about to describe."

        Angel backed away and bowed his head.

        "Now then," Wesley recited. "It seems to be a reference to the Ancient Egyptian, the Heliopolitan cosmology of ancient Egypt. You've heard of the sun god, Ra, I take it?"

        "Yeah, a little."

        "Out of the chaos that was known as Nun, Ra emerged, essentially creating himself. Ra then created all that is known according to the Egyptians."

        "And what does this have to do with the Warriors that took Cordelia." He could barely pronounce her name, he choked as he said it. His vision narrowed and his focus broke as he thought of her, her trust in him. Trust. To keep her safe.

        "From other texts, I've come to discern," Wesley was saying. "There are those warriors of the Powers that Be that believe the Powers are based in this myth." Wesley held up his hands and continued, "Not that Ra and Nun are true to life gods or anything of the sort. But that they are representative of the Powers that Be. That there is a good face and an evil face to the Powers."

        "Split in two as chaos and order would be. Two sides of the same coin."

        "Exactly," Wesley confirmed. "Except that these interpretations are just that interpretations. Some of the Powers warriors have formed a splinter group, called the Warriors of the Sun."

        "A splinter group, I never heard of them."

        "No, of course not." Wesley slid his hands into his pockets. Most on the Watchers council keep it hush hush. Using the whole mythology of Nun and Ra, these Warriors of the Sun believe that Ra or order has been tarnished with chaos or Nun." Wesley leaned against the counter in the hotel lobby. "That is to say, some of your fellow warriors believe the Powers to be contaminated by dark forces, chaotic forces. Such as a vampire with a soul."

        "So they formed the Warriors of the Sun."

        "Exactly, to clean house as it were." Wesley sighed. "I should have seen it coming." He shook his head and murmured, "I never realized their ranks had grown so much over the years."

        "Is there any basis to their theory?"

        "Umm?"

        "Their theory of dark forces contaminating the Powers that Be. Can we be sure they aren't right?"

        And Wesley took a step toward him and answered, "No, no we can't be sure at all."

Friends, faces drifted and passed as the shifting sun light patterned the room with the remnants of day. Each came in to pay their final salutations, their final words of farewell. In his long days, his years of gracelessness he believed he would walk the shores of Earth until the sun light failed and the Earth died. And yet the Earth continued, the click of the clock picked out the passage of time, its endlessness. He had been released.

        Released. For her immurement.

        She stood sentinel over him as the others spoke their peace. Apologized or reminisced. Some touched his hand, others edged back against the wall as if to melt into the shadows. Each in their own turn, each with their own beliefs of what his life had been, could have been.

        Still only one knew. Only one.

        She remained near him, holding him as they passed through the room a parade of his sins and his blessings. She would never leave him, not in the end days. Not now.

        Yet she left him once. Those years ago. Left him.


        As he opened the door to his hotel room, he gathered the strength to say something, anything to her. Their flight from the desert had left him with little reserve to draw upon. He stumbled but her hands caught him, supported him. Her strength built as the night moved on. Without thought, he entered his apartment and tossed his coat on the chair, wanting to collapse into it, wanting for all the world to close his eyes and find the day wiped away.

        It was then he realized. She still stood outside his home. Waiting.

        To be invited in.

        The beating blood in his chest, puddled and sank into the abyss as he asked her to come in. Confined, constrained by the savageness of the beast, the demon. His demon, his demon. She stepped into the room and whispered for him to rest. He shook his head, he needed her to understand.

        "You have to do it."

        Silence answered him.

        He didn't look at her as she stood slightly behind him. Instead he concentrated on the floor, the carpeting, each thread as it wound its way around the others woven and mated forever.

        "Do it!" he hissed. "Turn me back, I won't let you go through this alone." He spun on his heel and faced her. "You don't know how it is. The hell it is. Turn me back and I can help you."

        She tilted her head as she had before and parted her lips. He rushed to her side and gripped her arms, waiting to crush her and hold her all at once. "Do it, Cordelia. There's no other way. Please do me this one favor."

        With a quick upper slash, she hit him off and he staggered backward. He couldn't see her anymore, the tears blurred his vision and choked his throat so that it became impossible to breathe.

        Her hands were there, comforting him and then slowly effortlessly she kissed him. Her mouth opened his and he gasped. She pressed her lips upon him, his mouth, his neck, tantilizing the pulse. Her hands wandered and slipped under his shirt, pulling away his clothes, freeing him.

        "Please Cordelia, do it, turn me." He murmured as the need shifted through him, quickened the throb of his heart and he shuddered against the growing want. He felt her fanged teeth rake his skin and he closed his eyes, awaiting the puncture and death.

        It did not come. They fell instead to the bed and she took off her own clothes as she held him, as his tongue found her lips, breasts. Her intake of air seemed to steal the air from his own lungs as he realized she did not need it. She urged him on, asking him to touch her, to lead her. How long had he wanted this moment? How long had he dreamed of it? Yet knew he could never have it? Now she lay before him, the dim light glinted off her healed skin. He'd saved her when he turned her.

        And she had saved him.

        Reaching for him, she brought him inside her, inside the depths of her. She welcomed him and he strained against the developing wave. He watched as she worked against but with him. Watched as the rhythm took her and she cried out. But closed his own eyes as he surrendered to his love for her.

        His Cordelia.

        They curled around one another, entwined until he didn't know where he began and she ended. Her fingers drifted over his skin, seemed to draw along the curves and ridges. He kept his face close to hers, breathing near her as if he could breathe for the both of them.

        "You'll do it, won't you," he whispered.

        Glancing up into his eyes, she asked, "Do you love me?"

        A tightness wound around his throat and he admitted, "For too long, forever. Cordelia, yes. I love you."

        She moved away from him, untangling herself from his embrace, sitting up and turning her back on him. To the dark she said, "That's why I can't turn you." Peering over her shoulder, she added, "I love you too much."

        He sat up, grasping her arm. "No, you have to do it." He clenched his teeth. "There isn't any choice."

        "There's always a choice." But before she explained, it took her. A vision. She dropped into his arms and called out in pain. He held her as she thrashed. When she settled, he gathered her close to his chest, to the beating of his heart.

        "You're still connected to the Powers."

        She squeezed her eyes opened and closed, blinking away the tears. "Yes, I knew from the start I was." She gave a small shiver. Laying a hand on his face, she said, "The demon may have my body but the Powers have my soul."

        Embracing her, he rocked her gently, evenly. "I couldn't even save you from it. The demon. It has you. It. Has. You."

        "Don't Angel, please." She wrapped her arms around him, kissed him lightly on the cheek. "I have to go."

        "Go?"

        "The vision," she whispered.

        "Where, where are we going?" He stroked the fine silk of her hair.

        "Not you, me."

        "What?" He yanked her away from him. "You're not going anywhere without me."

        "It's not your fight. It's mine." She grasped him and though he struggled he could not fight her strength. Her lips brushed his lightly and then she said, "I'm sorry."

        She bit into him, ripped into his throat and drew from him the blood, the sustenance that she needed. It drained out of him, the very pounding of his heart seemed to fall and plummet into the vortex. It swallowed him, the demon, his demon, her demon. But as he grappled to find relief, to drink from her in some unholy communion, she denied him.

        He sank onto the bed. The world narrowed and inked into blackness. He heard her hit the buttons on the phone. She was saying something, something to Wesley yet he couldn't understand the words, comprehend the meaning. He wanted to move, to beg her. But she'd left him weak, dying.

        She leaned over him and kissed him. "Good night, my love."

I watch. From the shadow, I watch as the ambulance takes him, pulls his lifeless body out of the hotel and delivers him to the safety of the hospital. I remember him then. Remember his dark silence as I yelled at him for coming back to us, for coming back to us only after Wesley had been shot. Something punctures me, something stabs at my soul. They don't want me to linger, they don't want me to stay here.

        The Powers tug at my inner core, yanking me to my chosen duty. Chosen. I know I chose this as clearly as I know he will survive. I saw it all in my vision. Saw what I had to do, no matter what. No matter the sacrifice.

        But I cannot ignore his pain. I feel it beating inside me, the echo of his heart. Instead of listening to the call, to my mission, I follow his footsteps. I take the underground sewers to the hospital. The mission can wait. The cleansing will take place. I whisper to them, the Powers and make my way to the hospital basement, pass the sick and dying.

        Wesley stands over him, his hand is on Angel's chest as if the beating, the rhythm there might stop if he doesn't touch him.

        "Cordelia." He rushes to me, grabs me and holds on. I feel him tremble with fear. He talks lowly into my ear. "He's alive. How did this happen? How did you get away from the Warriors of the Sun?"

        I jerk away from him, the heat of Angel's blood in my veins fools him. I am still warm from my feeding. And the resonance of that moment when I tasted human blood, his blood amplifies and I hear nothing else but the rush, the thud of Angel's blood . The density of his life within the fluid courses through me and I smile as I realize it is my blood we share.

        Wesley is still talking, lending his theories to what could have happened to Angel but I round the bed and go to his side. I place my hand on his chest and feel the strength of his heart. It will beat for the two of us. For now, forever. Mine will not beat again. I know that.

        "Cordelia," Wesley says and leans over to me from across the space of the bed. "Do you have any idea what happen. How?"

        I nod but say nothing.

        He's gripping my wrist now, twisting it. He hurts me. I could hurt him, break him without regard but I do nothing.

        "Wesley, you better sit down," I direct and gesture to a chair. He takes the one in the shaded corner. The other is in the light, the sunlight. I glance at Angel, I've given up sunlight for him. I continue to stand as I explain, "I had a vision before the Warriors of the Sun came."

        "A vision?"

        I drag my hand along the sheets of the bed and find Angel's hand. It's warm, living, comforting. "Yes, early that morning." When was it? I couldn't even remember now. A day, a week, a month ago? It doesn't matter. All is as it has to be.

        "And?" Wesley grasps the arms of the chair, his knuckles whitening.

        There will be only one chance to explain this, and my choice. "It showed me that Angel would die if the Warriors captured him." I look down. I see the flickering images. Angel tortured as they slowly rip him apart. He is their nemesis. "I made sure that when they came they took me instead."

        I recall picking up the crossbow as the Warriors swarm into the hotel lobby like a plague of locusts. I aimed and fired, hitting my target squarely in the foot, hobbling Angel. I screamed then about the vision and my link to the Powers. Their hands were all over me, grabbing me, clawing me. Consciousness was not a blessing.

        "I had to save Angel." I touch his forehead and smile. "I didn't know if I could do it when the time came." I laugh a little as I think about it. "Me, Cordelia Chase sacrificing everything for him."

        "Cordelia, you're not making much sense. What else are you not telling me? There must be more?" Wesley stands by my side, his hands on my arms. I feel my skin begin to cool, he'll notice soon. The lack of breath, the lack of heat. Soon.

        "The Powers showed me the Warriors but they also showed me Angel." Here, my voice shakes. I don't want to admit the next part. His life away from me. "Angel has a destiny."

        "Yes, the prophecy."

        I shake my head. "No." I see the passages of images from the vision again. I see his hands, Angel's hands as he cradles the infant in his arms. "Angel line will father the last Slayer."

        His quick intake of breath at my announcement does not surprise me and I look at him from the corner of my eyes. "The last Slayer. His son will father the last Slayer." I see the face of his son and I can't help but think how much he looks like his father.

        "And the Powers showed you this? All of this? Cordelia, you should have informed us immediately of this turn of events." He is holding my hand, squeezing it with joy. It dawns on him then. "But how did he become human?"

        "The Powers," I falter then and grab the rail of the bed Angel lies in. "The Warriors knew of this."

        He nods and urges me on.

        "They wanted Angel dead so that they could redirect the line of Slayer. They didn't want the Slayer power to be tainted with dark forces." I clear my throat. "But if they were successful the Slayer line would die. The Powers called me to help them."

        My hands are cold now, frigid from the story, the images still burning in my brain. Tears form in my eyes but I shun them. "They only directed me to get captured in Angel's place. That's all I knew."

        He takes my hand and asks one more time, "How did he become human?"

        "The only way he ever could, through his link to the Powers." I raise my hand to Wesley's face. "I let him drink and I drank from him."

        "Lords, Cordelia, what are you saying?"

        "One life for another." I move away from him and reach into the sunlight. My hand instantly smokes and, wincing, I pull it back.

        "Good lord, Cordelia, no!" He grabs me and crushes me to him. "Not this way. The Powers couldn't have wanted it this way. There must be someway to fix this, to reverse it."

        I lean against him, pressing my face against his chest and feeling how secure it is. "Don't, Wesley. Don't." I fight the tears again. I will not cry. I am Cordelia Chase. And I do not cry. But even as I state these words in my head, the tears tumble down my face.

        "We'll consult the books or the Host, someone."

        I yank away from him. I have to leave now, before my resolve dwindles entirely. It's like a limestone statue being worn away by the acid in the rain. "There's a reason for everything, Wesley." I shrug. What other reason would I have been drawn to work for him, a souled vampire. It was a path toward something greater. "Take care of him, Wesley."

        "Where are you going?" He tries to keep my hand but I free myself.

        "Back to them." I'm at the door way.

        "Them?"

        "The Warriors of the Sun." Briefly, my features transform and I say, "It's time for the sun to set."

I see the world trembling, falling down as I watch him rasp for his last breaths. I don't want to be here, I can't see this. To have this image of him branded in my brain for all the days I walk the Earth breaks at my resolve to stay with him. As if he realizes this, he turns his head and his aged eyes gaze upon me. He smiles, that tender, broad smile and I see the youth still twinkling there.

        "Cordelia." His voice is wrecked by age, by disease. Yet my name sounds like a song on his lips. I come to his side and sit on the bed. He whispers my name again and I fight to maintain some semblance of dignity. I can't lose him. He is my link to humanity, my human self. He tries to push himself up to face me but fails. I edge closer and help him, cradling him in my arms.

        Even though his eyes are glazed with fog, I know he can see me. "Angel," I murmur to him. And the smile, that smile graces his lips again.

        He reaches up and, with the fingers of the artist he has been, he traces my features. His touch is deliberate and searching, delicate and probing. He wants to feel everything, I sense. And I transform my visage to the vampire I have called Chase all these years. He does not shy away, but lingers as if he dwells upon a certain dream he once had.

        I ease back into my human form and the space between us lets me feel his breath. It warms my cool skin, but it shakes in its frailty. I lay him back against the cushions and he sighs as if he has what he needed, what he was looking for.

        The door creaks open and I glance up from my sentinel duty by his side. The man enters the room in silent reverence. He nods to me and a little smile tugs at the corner of my lips. He is so much like his father.

        "He asked me to give this to you," he says as he hands me an envelope. "I wrote it out for him. I-I" he stops and looks down at the floor. He seems like a boy, like his father in this attribute, but I recall he is very nearly forty. "I want you to know, I agree. That's all I can say now."

        "Agree?"

        "Read the letter." He lifts his chin to indicate the envelope in my hand.

        "Yes," I grasp the paper. It smells like Angel. "Thank you, Liam."

        Liam nods again and leaves me with the letter. His last words, his last request of me.

        I denied him his only other request, long ago. He asked me to turn him, to sire him. But I refused. I wonder now as I stare down at his frail form if I had the chance to do it again, would I have been so stringent in my resolve?

        The images of his life float with me. Have become part of me. Without him knowing it, I protected him, guarded him throughout the years. I vanquished the Warriors of the Sun, yet there were others bent on destroying him and his family. I remained close, always close. I returned to him only once a year.

        On the day that I was sired.

        I recall the night I first returned, my first anniversary of my death. He stood with his hands in his pockets in his garden outside the hotel. He was gazing up at the stars and I could tell he was cold. But he didn't move to the warmer, more comfortable indoors. And I approached him.

        My words were low in my throat, the want so strong it strangled me. When he saw me there was no hesitation, he took me in his arms and held me. His face pressed against the crown of my head. I thought I detected the faintest quaver in his voice as he said, "Please, Cordelia, turn me. Turn me."

        I said nothing. Only grasped him and brought him toward me. We found one another, our mouths searched with potent urgency as if the sun might rise to end it all. We made slow aching love that night in his garden. Our last time. And as I called out his name in ecstasy, he wept for me even as the tide took him.

        We remained in his garden until daybreak, my hand wrapped in his. Haltingly, he began to detail his past year. The adjustment to real life, the loves and hates, the problems and stumbles. He spoke of turning the hotel lobby into an old book store and using one of the rooms for his art studio. He warmed to explaining to me all of his plans including opening the hotel to Gunn's kids. And I told him, he'd done a good thing. It stopped him to hear me say this, but he cleared his throat and went on. As the night wore on though, the words faded and died and we curled into and around one another. I slipped away as he slept.

        I returned every year, once a year. Throughout his marriage and the birth of his son, I watched and guarded him. There were the souls and the soulless that hunted him, but I remained and neither he nor his were ever harmed.

        And he became the very definition of humanity, my humanity to me. And now he dies and I cannot take it, I will breakdown. I crumple the paper, the envelope in my hand before I even realize I still hold it.

        Not Angel. I bite my finger to shift the pain to something more physical, more substantial. And I curse the Powers for letting him age, and not letting me age. For making me watch him die and not giving me a way out of this damned existence.

        "Angel," I whisper but he does not answer. His breaths are low and shallow now. I glance out the window. "Please stay with me, please. At least until sun light falls." I need something to distract me so I open the letter, rip it open with careless disregard. I smooth out the paper and blink several times so that I can focus on the page.

My dearest, my heart, my Cordelia,

We have made a pair, you and I. When I first met you I would never have believed that you would be the one to save me, to give me the one thing that I longed for during all my hopeless years. I remember asking you to turn me, to sire me again. Yet every time I asked, you refused. And I realize now how I must have offended you. What a wondrous gift you gave me, you gave me your own life.

There is nothing I can do to repay your kindness, your devotion, your love. But I do ask one thing. I do not wish to leave this world under natural circumstances. Please, as my last wish, I want you to be the one to lead me out of this life, to take me out of this life.

Forever,
Angel

        My tears are smearing the words and I look up to the man before me and see that he is watching me. I grab hold of his hand and squeeze it and he signals back to me.

        Closing my eyes, I quell the tremor that takes over my body as the thought rises in me. Blood, warm human blood. I haven't tasted it in years. I help him to sit and wrapping my arms around him whisper, "I love you."

        He fingers my lips and says, "Always."

        In a quick motion, my features shift and I bite down. I hear him gasp, strain as the pain arcs through his body. And the river of his life flows down my throat like a great cataract. The rush of his throbbing heart pounds in my ears, heats my face until I feel it flush. The fluid of his life expands outward, spreads from my breast to the tips of my hands. His life sizzles in my hands. He's grabbing me, holding me close. His lips are near my ear.

        "Gift, a gift from the Powers," he mumbled and sinks to unconsciousness. I drain him, dry him until he is only the shell of himself. Dropping his lifeless form on the bed, I stare for a long moment at him. Dead, Gone.

        Curling up beside him, the sobs take me. I cry until the sun died. I cry until the moon rose. I cry in heaving breaths.

        It strikes me. The tears are choking me, I can't breathe. I need to breathe.

        I stare at Angel in his final repose. A gift. I sit and glance up at the ceiling as if to beckon the Powers to explain. I never knew, in all the years. I thought I would be cursed. But I have been blessed. Blessed with his blood.

        My warm hand grasps his cooling one as the door opens again.

        "Is it done?"

        "Yes, he's gone," I say and look at Liam.

        "And you're?"

        "Human again," I stumble over the words. "You knew?"

        "Yeah, I'm the one that had the vision." Liam smiled, that half crooked smile of his father. He leans over to me and wraps an arm around my shoulder. "Thank you."

        "For what?"

        "For everything you did for our family over the years. He knew, he always knew you were there." He tilted his head. "He loved you very deeply."

        "As he did your mother," I say too quickly.

        He smiles as our eyes meet. "As I hope to one day."

        And we stand in the corner of the room, watching in the starlight the last of his spirit take leave.

the end