SPOILERS: 1st season. AU
SUMMARY: Doyle has come back from the dead. Now what?
ARCHIVAL/DISTRIBUTION: Anywhere, as long as you ask first.
DISCLAIMERS: Everybody here is from Angel and belongs to Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy Inc., Greenwolf Corp., Kuzui Enterprises/Sandollar Television, and 20th Century Fox Television. No infringement intended.
NOTES: Many thanks to Te for beta, especially for the ending.
I couldn’t fail. If I did, my self-sacrifice would turn out to be the world’s most selfish waste of time and lives. Instead of saving Angel, I’d be killing, him, Cordelia, and everyone else in this thing’s range. I couldn’t fail.
But I couldn’t even feel the fucking plug in my hands anymore, not through the searing agony that went all the way down to my bones, throbbing and burning. Couldn’t even see it anymore, couldn’t see anything after the white light had destroyed my vision. All I could do was endure the pain--something having the visions had trained me for--and pull with all the strength I could muster, trying to unplug the damned machine, hoping that my grip hadn’t loosened. Hoping that I was still pulling the plug apart. God, how could something that hurt this bad keep hurting worse?
Through the blackness and the agony, I pulled. I pulled and pulled and pulled and pulled and pulled and pulled and I think I got it! And I screamed and--
--opened my eyes. Marble. I saw marble. I could see. I was lying on marble. Cold. Hurts. But hurts like I overexerted myself, been lightly beaten up, and got a sunburn, not like I’d been turned into a crispy critter.
Did I save everybody?
I felt like I wanted to puke, but that was a light punishment considering.
Dream? No, burning had felt too real. But what was this then? Did I save everybody? I was obviously somewhere else, since I doubted freight tankers had marble floors. So somebody must have moved me. Didn’t know why they left me on the floor, but I didn’t feel like being choosy. We must’ve won.
I’d be all "take that, Scourge" if I didn’t want to roll over and sleep, if I didn’t get a repeat viewing of my last three meals first.
Did the Scourge’s machine just transport me somewhere else? I’d never laugh at Doctor McCoy refusing to beam anywhere ever again.
Shaking, I slowly rolled over and saw marble everywhere else too. Then I saw the bodies. Two of them, lying in pools of blood. I dragged myself over to them.
It looked like they’d died hard and messy. They didn’t smell human, but they didn’t smell like anything else I’d ever run into either. Dried blood marred skin marbled gold and metallic blue. They were dressed in a kind of ancient Grecian way, with her curled hair done in a style that supported the look. The Oracles?
Angel had described them for me, and these two fit. But only the pure of heart could enter the Netherworld of Eternal Watching, and this didn’t look like the act of a pure-hearted being. How did a murderer get here? Hell, I shouldn’t have been here. They’d treated Angel like shite for showing up, and he was a noble-hearted Warrior for the Powers. The Oracles wouldn’t exactly welcome a half-breed Messenger type whose heart was definitely less than pure.
Now that they were dead, I doubted they’d mind as much. Something was really wrong with the world. What had happened here? I’d better get out in case the big nasty came back looking for victims.
No, I didn’t have to worry. Angel had killed him.
Relief washed over me. Angel was still alive, then. Or still undead. Whatever. I’d saved the day after all. Cordelia had to be alive then too, and she’d hit me for making her worry. Pathetic of me to be looking forward to getting punched, but she was my princess after all.
Then I had to ask, What? How the hell did I know that Angel had avenged the Oracles?
I had it in my head like I remembered it, like I’d been there watching it. Angel fighting the Warrior of the Underworld in a crypt using some kind of scythe-like weapon; maggots coming out of the big nasty’s face before he died.
When did all this happen?
I started to shake even more. How long had I been gone? How long? Tell me that, magic memory.
Nothing.
I had to get out of here and find out.
Weak as I felt, it took me a while to drag myself to my feet and exit through the Gateway of Lost Souls. I didn’t waste more than a minute thinking how appropriate that was, because I had to find a newspaper. I needed a date.
LA wasn’t a city big on helping out pedestrians, so it took me a while to find a paper. But when I did....
Months. I’d been gone for months. Everybody had to think I’d died. Maybe I had. I may have been staggering around like a bum in the middle of a long bender and smelled a little charred around the edges, but I could see, and my skin looked about as good as it ever did. Before the pain had gotten so bad that all I felt was pain, I could feel the Scourge’s weapon burning me away layer by layer. I couldn’t quite make myself believe that it had been disassembling me to reassemble me elsewhere.
I may have died.
I hadn’t felt this cold inside since the day I found out I was half-demon. Not even realizing that Harry wasn’t coming back had hurt this bad.
"Hey, are you gonna buy that?" the counter guy yelled.
"No." And I walked away fast. I had to get to the office, find Angel and Cordelia. Get some answers.
No. Oh, God, no.
I stood and stared, feeling whatever calm I’d worked my way up to crumble and fall into a deep pit. The blackened and boarded up remains of our office building leered at me from behind reams of yellow police tape. Angel had his apartment in the basement....
Endings. Things end here.
But how did this happen? Were Angel and Cordelia all right?
Things end.
That’s not enough!
I saw some guy I didn’t know in Angel’s apartment. I saw the building explode. I saw Angel running through the flames. Things end.
Did he die? Come on, did it kill him?
Nothing.
Cordelia’s. I had to go to Cordelia’s apartment. Maybe they were there. Maybe they were okay. Please let them be okay....
I had $20.54 in my wallet. And some credit cards, since companies today seemed to like it if you couldn’t pay up and they could charge you so much interest that future generations would still be paying off your bill. Oh wait, I’d been dead for a few months, so they’d probably deactivated my accounts. I didn’t have a hope in hell of stopping a cab if I started to laugh hysterically.
Half my money and an hour later, I ran to Cordelia’s door. I should have spontaneously combusted in the cab from worry, panic, and impatience, and, damn, that wasn’t anywhere near a funny image, not anymore. The door opened as I reached the threshold, but nobody stood behind it. "Thanks, Dennis," I murmured. Good ghost.
It looked like her stuff in here, and I heard her voice coming from the kitchen. My knees almost gave out in my relief. But what about-- Then I heard Angel too. I collapsed onto the couch, shaking again, but this time with relief. Alive. They were alive. I put my face in my hands and tried to breathe.
I heard her voice getting closer as she asked Dennis something, then she shouted, "Oh my God! Doyle?" She threw herself down onto the couch next to me and latched onto me, then flung herself away before I could hug back. "How do I know you’re really Doyle?" she demanded.
I glanced up and saw her looking scared and angry. Behind her, Angel looked concerned. God, Angel.... For a moment I had the crazy fear that him being happy about me coming back might be too happy and push him over into being Angelus. Damn, but the curse made you think too much and around corners. How sick and sad. "Too" happy.
He didn’t go bad this time though, just kept being quietly happy Angel. Thank God. I didn’t need to bear the responsibility of bringing Angelus back.
Looking at Cordelia again, I saw something new in her eyes that hadn’t been there before. Something that-- "I’m so sorry, Princess. If I knew you’d get the visions, I never would’ve kissed you, I swear."
"Doyle!" she cried. Squealed, almost.
She and Angel knelt down next to the couch and gang-hugged me. This was what I’d sacrificed myself for. I cared about the other folks too, but my selfishness made Cordelia and Angel far more precious to me. I melted into them, taking refuge in her living heat and his undead lukewarmth. I loved them so much. I felt my pulse slow to match Angel stroking my hair. It took everything I had to do the manly thing and stop myself from crying.
Then Cordelia pulled away and raised her fist. "How did you know about the visions? Where the hell have you been? Have you been hanging around after all? We thought you were--"
"What’s going on?" a voice with a British accent said.
I saw the guy who’d been in Angel’s apartment. Yeah, he’d been in the explosion, and that explained the bandages on his face. When he looked at Angel... he had the same goofy, adoring look in his eyes that I hoped mine didn’t always show.
When Angel turned to face the guy, his eyes had a similar look. Love. "It’s... it’s a bit hard to explain, Wesley."
Oh, shite.
Months. I’d been gone, dead, for months, and Angel had moved on. A good... friend hopes his friends will move on after he’s dead. Thing is, that good friend doesn’t come back.
Did he and Wesley ever--
"This is Doyle," Cordelia said. "We thought he was dead, but here he is. He still hasn’t explained that." She sounded annoyed.
It almost made me smile. What I had to say stopped that almost as well as seeing Angel and Wesley did. "I... I think I was dead. What happened to the office?"
"One of our enemies out to destroy us, as usual," Cordelia said.
"Doyle, what happened to you?" Angel looked at me with some love too. Or was I just hoping that? He handed me a glass of scotch. Maybe it was love.
"Did we save everybody from the Scourge?" I asked as I took a sip. Single malt. Rich burn going down, a soothing pain, that spread a bit of warmth through my insides. I needed all the help I could get.
"Oh, yeah," Cordelia said. "They were calling you their chosen one or something."
"You did it," Angel said. "You shouldn’t have but--"
"You’re a Warrior, and you’re needed for the End of Days. I was more expendable. And I couldn’t let you die," I said.
Cordy asked, probably in some Cordelian attempt to lighten the mood, "Do you know that your apartment was picked clean by the time we got there?" She sounded upset over it.
"Word travels fast through the underground. I owed a lot of people. Don’t know how much value they got out of my stuff. Don’t worry about it." So I had no apartment and no clothes. All I had was what I wore. I’d miss my grandmother’s afghan and my other leather jackets--the black, the tan, the oxblood--the most. Just had the brown left now. The office being torched meant that the stuff I kept at Angel’s place was destroyed.
And I couldn’t stay here. Not when I saw the bond they all had. I could tell that Wesley had been through fire with them, and it had left the three of them attached at the hip. The damned Powers had even made Cordelia Angel’s Messenger, with all the head-splitting visions that came attached to the position, poor girl. No place here for me anymore.
It made me wonder why I’d been brought back.
I should have known that self-sacrifice wouldn’t cancel out my debt. Penance continued. I felt colder and so tired....
"But what happened to you, Doyle?" Wesley asked. "This is important." I saw fear in his eyes when he looked at me. At first I thought it was the whole "coming back from the dead" thing, but then I realized that he’d probably seen worse during his time with Angel and Cordelia. No, it looked like his fear was more on the "ex coming to visit" level.
Did they fill my old place in with some poor guy who was like me?
"I came to in the Netherworld of Eternal Watching about two hours ago. I saw the Oracles’ bodies."
"I begged them to turn back time for you as they did for me. They refused," Angel said.
"Now I don’t feel quite so bad about them being dead."
"Have you noticed anything different about yourself since you came back?" Wesley asked. "Anything... oracular?"
"I’ve been a seer for a long while. Look, if you know something, just tell me. You trying to say I’m an Oracle now?" Me, a Knowing One? I didn’t know anything anymore.
"It would fit with some of the prophecies I’ve seen."
Cordelia asked, "The prophecies you made a ‘tiny’ error in that made you think Angel would die when what it really said was that Angel would get a chance to be mortal again?" At least she wasn’t all googly-eyed over the guy. I’d worried since she seemed to have a taste for dark-haired sad cases with bad haircuts.
"When you can read obscure languages that have been extinct for thousands of years, then you can criticize."
Just what Angel needed for his missions. Looked like they’d traded up when they’d replaced me. "Angel has a chance at being human? Mortal?" I asked.
Angel smiled. "If I fight all the fiends, vanquish a few plagues, and stop the Apocalypse. Easy."
"That’s great, man. Okay, the whole Apocalypse thing sucks for every living and undead thing on the planet, but at least you have a chance. ‘The old order passes away, and the new order’s come.’" I didn’t know where the last words had come from.
"‘He that was dead shall now arise,’" Wesley finished for me. Well, finished a little. He left out the part about he who was first now becoming last.
"Yeah. That was me. Dead." I looked down, unable to keep looking at them and how together they were. I had to keep my tone light no matter how much I wanted to bury my face in my hands and hide. "I guess I know what I have to do."
"You do?" Cordelia asked.
"I’m an Oracle now. It would explain the weird things I keep knowing."
"You’re an Oracle, but you had to come here to find out if we were alive?"
"Actually, the original Oracles didn’t know everything either," Angel said.
It made me feel better to think that I followed a tradition of incompetence. Meant expectations wouldn’t be as high, which was good since I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. Not that I could see myself turning back a day like they had for Angel. "I guess I get to stay in the Netherworld of Eternal Watching for when you need me. It’ll take me a while to get the necessary level of snootiness going, but I’ll be calling Angel a ‘lower being’ with authority in no time."
"You’re going to stay there?" Cordelia asked. "Angel described it for me, and ‘comfortable’ is the opposite of all the words he used."
"Well, that is Oracle Central, and my apartment must be rented to someone else by now. Then again, I might have to find a source of income to keep me in food and drinks. But think how much I’ll save in rent and utilities."
"You... could stay here." Cordelia said it like she didn’t know why I’d think otherwise. Bless her.
"Where’s Angel staying?" I asked. Wesley’s head snapped up at my question.
"Here. None of us have much money."
"Then I can’t stay here too. There’s no room." I watched Wesley breathe out in relief.
As much as I wanted to hate him for moving in and them for moving on, I couldn’t. I understood too well. It’s not like he’d been hanging around hoping I’d be knocked off; he’d just stepped into this after I was gone. Things is, hate would be a cleaner feeling than this despair; hate made you go out and do things while despair made you want to find a hole to lie in. The Netherworld of Eternal Watching would substitute for a hole pretty nicely. Well, it would once I cleared the corpses out.
"Doyle, you’re too tired to be thinking straight," Cordelia said. "We’ll talk again after you have a nap."
And here I thought I had a good front up. "You make it sound like I’m five."
"Well, you’re acting like it."
"Doyle--" Angel started. He had his reasonable voice on.
"No, I’m right," I said. "Me sleeping on it won’t make me any less right."
Angel sat next to me and grabbed me into a hug. I thought of struggling, but that would look pretty damned silly. "This won’t work," I muttered.
He rested my head against his chest, which made everything dimmer, one large hand cupping the back of my skull while the other settled at the small of my back. Quiet, with no heart pounding against my ear. His charcoal-colored sweater felt soft and almost cool against my face. I thought of saying that smothering me wouldn’t change my mind, but I felt so safe here that I couldn’t even joke about it. He wore this spicy, woody scent to disguise the vampire thing a bit, since vampires really didn’t smell of anything unless you got a whiff of old blood from their mouths or they were sloppy eaters. I felt Cordelia’s hand stroking my hair. This was familiar, so familiar that everything else might not have happened. But it had....
As my eyelids drooped further, someone took the glass from my hand. Damn, I should have put up more of a fight, but it was too hard....
When I woke up nestled in sheets scented with Cordelia’s soap and shampoo, I didn’t feel better. I had that grogginess short naps gave me, like my body was ticked off and vengeful about being only teased with real sleep. This time my mind didn’t waste time by letting me think that maybe it had all been a dream. Everything was too real.
Wesley sat in a nearby chair with a book on his lap and set aside a glass of red wine. I must’ve had some look on my face, because he said, "They took turns watching over you until I convinced them to let me take a shift."
"That’s not what I was thinking." My voice sounded like it had been dragged behind a car.
"No?"
"No." I shouldn’t have let out as much as I did, so I didn’t intend to say what I had thought. He’d probably take it as offensive to either himself or to Angel and Cordelia if I said it seemed kind of shitty to him to leave him to watch me.
Wesley almost smiled. "I volunteered vociferously, I assure you." He got it anyway. Didn’t know if I should be impressed or worried.
I was starting to wonder if he always looked sad and concerned or if he only did that when I was in the room. Something about his angular, fine-boned face made him look like nobody’d ever fed him right. Like he was hungry all the time, starving. Weird to think of a grown man looking waifish, but he did to me. Even without the bandages he would.
Ex-Watcher, fired by the Council. He and Cordelia had lusted after one another in Sunnydale, but it hadn’t worked out. Angel had found him in LA hunting demons. His father had--
I pressed my fingers against my closed eyes to try to stop it, but it continued no matter how much I didn’t want to know the way his father had treated him until it stopped itself. I especially wished I could erase the image of him tied up being tortured by a smoky-voiced, vindictive brunette. None of it explained the powder blue sweater he currently wore.
Much as the visions had hurt, at least they’d let me know pretty definitively what I knew versus what some thing somewhere fed me. This bit where it felt like my own memories gave me a seriously disquieted feeling. I mean, most of it was fairly obvious now, but how long before it became harder to tell?
If I palled around with Angel and Cordelia and Wesley, it would only be easier for most of the Knowing to disguise itself as something I’d heard from them.
"Doyle?" He sounded genuinely concerned.
"How long have I been out?" I asked.
Wesley checked his watch. "35 hours and 42 minutes. Nearly 36 hours."
"36 hours? What the hell did they put in my scotch?"
"Scotch."
Damn. I opened my eyes. "Wow. I’m really not in drinking trim, am I?"
"You’ve had a rough time of it." He had these puppy eyes that his wire-rim glasses accentuated. I wanted him to stop looking so concerned over me, because it just made me feel worse. "Yeah, you could say that. Where the hell did Cordelia sleep while I was taking up her bed for three days?" Not the way I wanted to spend time in her bed, that’s for sure.
"She has a futon--"
I winced. What a bastard I was, putting her out of her bed and leaving her to sleep on a torture device. "I’m going to give her bed back and try to make it up to her, poor girl." I started to lift the cover away until I realized that I only wore my T-shirt and boxers. I put it back down. "Uh--"
"Angel carried you in and undressed you." Wesley didn’t sound at all happy about that, not that I could blame him. "Your clothing is in the wash and your jacket at the cleaners. Cordelia bought you a few more items."
"I’m sure she jumped at the chance to fix my look."
"She sounded obscenely pleased, yes."
"I don’t understand why you volunteered to watch me. It’s hardly Must See TV."
"Angel and Cordelia needed a rest. The longer you slept, the more they worried. In another three hours we would have started to panic. In any case, Doyle, you came back from the dead. Oh, and you are alive. I checked for a pulse, and you are breathing."
Felt like someone walked over my grave. Shite, but I was going to have to start avoiding some figures of speech. "Way to give a guy a complex when he wasn’t worrying about that before."
"I had to see if you were a revenant or--"
"I get the point."
"Aside from that, you’re an embodiment of a prophecy that’s very important to us. You’re also half-demon."
"You’re a Watcher."
"Ex-Watcher." He said it emphatically, though some lingering resentment and sadness lurked in his voice.
"I know. Ex-Watcher, but you were trained by Watchers. The general Watcher way of studying half-demons is to kill them."
"I’ve come to believe that such things are best decided on a case by case basis. Never fear; you’re worth far more to us risen from the dead than dead." Wesley looked down. "And Angel loves you. So I have many reasons to want to know you."
"He loves you too." It was so obvious....
Wesley smiled a little, then once again read the look on my face and said, "The curse is still a problem, though." I was going to have to put up curtains on my face or something.
The damned curse. No moments of perfect happiness allowed for him, and since the last time he’d lost his soul from happiness had been during sex, Angel and I had tormented one another in hundreds of ways because of it. We had marathon make-out sessions. He watched me stroke myself, or he gave me handjobs or blowjobs that should have blown the top of my head off. But I couldn’t jack or suck him, so I couldn’t reciprocate. Some guys might see that as the perfect situation, but I wasn’t one of them. Fucking had been out of the question completely, and it had obsessed the both of us. I’d fantasize about him fucking me, or I’d watch him walk and want to own that ass.
Thinking about this right now did me a world of good. I really didn’t need the distraction.
No matter what we did, Angel worried. The worry probably kept his soul intact, but if he became too accustomed to sex being safe, we couldn’t help wondering if perfect happiness would creep in.
Now Wesley was part of the club, God help him.
"They both love you," Wesley said.
"But they don’t need me anymore, if they ever really did. Well, Angel needed me as his contact to the Powers, but Cordelia does that now. And I don’t know what the hell I’m doing if I am an Oracle."
"My impression of the Oracles was that they were conduits of power, not the source. You simply have to beseech the right source."
"I tried that at the office. It just told me that things ended. The hour ride here was the longest ride of my life. Otherwise, it just throws random chunks of information at me when it feels like it."
"Maybe it’ll get better with practice."
"Maybe everybody would be better off if I didn’t endanger them."
"I’m not going to let you disappear."
"It’d be worth your while if I did."
"If not for you, Angel would have died before I had a chance to meet up with him again in Los Angeles. Cordelia might have as well," Wesley snapped. "When I think of everything you’ve been through I’m inclined to agree with them that you’re in no condition to make important decisions yet." It hurt too much to stay and watch them, but hell if I would say that. None of them could do anything about it, so why bother mentioning it? It looked like I would have to lull them into a false sense of security before I’d get another chance to take off. "Do I get to take a shower unattended?"
"Of course. However, you have to leave the door partly open." Wesley almost smirked.
"You’re thinking I’ll climb out the bathroom window?"
"From what Cordelia has said of your past, I think you’re capable."
"Slander. I resent having my good name blackened when I’m not around to defend myself.""
"It’s not like I’ll peek."
It sucked, but I decided to go with it. "Not like I’m such a beauty anyway. Coming back gave me my sight back, so why couldn’t the Powers or whatever shave off a bit of my beer belly too?"
"Cordelia and Angel never told me you were blind."
"I wasn’t. That bomb thing," //The Beacon,// "the Beacon-- Oh hell." Stop that!
"Doyle?"
"Don’t worry, I’m not going crazy. Well, not in the normal way of things. Just me in the process of being a conduit." I took a deep breath. "The Beacon was so bright it burnt out my eyes in seconds."
"Oh."
Good going, Doyle. That brought the room down right fast. "Clothes?"
He handed me a pile of blue and black. When I got out of bed with it, I took a moment to be thankful that at least Angel hadn’t left my socks on. Walking around in boxers, socks, and my black T-shirt with the red Chinese dragon on it would have made me feel like a total dink. Now I just reached partial dinkhood. I just about ran to the bathroom so I didn’t have to have Wesley looking at me for longer than I had to. Would be nice if I could make a dignified first impression on somebody, but that didn’t seem to be in the cards since I’d learned I was half-demon.
The soap and shampoo waiting for me didn’t smell like they belonged to Cordelia or Angel. Wesley’s? Kind of a relief, considering my plans to leave and how sensitive my sense of smell had become since I’d manifested at 21. I didn’t need to be reminded of Cordelia and Angel even more than just being here did.
Showering with the bathroom door partly open kept giving me panic attacks. Been battered around by too many things in my lifetime. A door wouldn’t stop anything really nasty for very long, but it would give me a warning and a few moments of lead-time to run.
Once in a while I shouted, "I’m still in here. Haven’t gone out the window yet," just because being scared made me cranky. On the third time, I heard Wesley yell back, "Oh, that’s so terribly funny." It made me smile.
I enjoyed the feel of Cordelia’s really soft towels against my skin but trying to figure out her hairdryer humbled me. What the hell were all the attachments for? If she added anything more, it might evolve into artificial intelligence and run amuck as a killer robot. I finally got it working, though, then dressed once I had my hair at the mostly dry stage.
For all her talk of how terrible my fashion sense was, given the chance to shop for me, Cordelia hadn’t done anything too radical. Maybe she worried that anything unfamiliar beyond what I was already dealing with might send me beyond the bend. The collar on the blue shirt was different, and the fabric on everything was higher quality, but otherwise the outfit looked like something I might get for myself. Once I had it on, I saw that the pants were more tailored and fit better than my usual. But the black T-shirt could have come out of my own drawer. This ensemble would look damned good with my black jacket.
The one I didn’t own anymore because somebody stole it after I died.
I didn’t cry. I swore that to myself after Harry left and only really broke that promise once for a few hours after the Scourge had massacred that family of part-Brackens that’d come to me for help. The family I’d turned down. They deserved more than a few tears shed in their name. But I didn’t cry for me, not anymore.
"Doyle, I know that it all seems overwhelming right now," Wesley said from the other side of the door, "but you are loved and needed by Angel and Cordelia. You’ve been given a second chance. Second chances are rare. Don’t squander this one."
"What would you know? It’s better for everybody if I go."
"Do you want to leave because of me?"
"Because you’re here and because Angel loves you? That’s only part of it, so you don’t need to give yourself a complex over it. Main thing, I’m a selfish bastard who doesn’t want to hurt like this. I know you’re all expecting better since I gave up my life to save others, but that was an experimental thing and look how it turned out."
"He couldn’t even talk about you, Doyle. It obviously hurt him too much. One time he called me by your name," Wesley cut off my words before they left my mouth, "not at one of those times. I was arguing with Cordelia in a way that must have reminded him of you. It horrified him to slip like that. He didn’t want to compare us, but I think he couldn’t help it at times, just as you can never help comparing your current love with your ex-love."
Ex. Pretty much described me totally. Ex everything. "So?"
"Do you have any idea how badly I wished I could meet you? To see for myself what you were. You died for them. It’s hard to do anything that compares.
"Now you’re back. If you leave, he’ll hunt you down, and I’d help him, though not for any altruistic reasons. It would kill him to lose you again, and I’d kill you once more myself if I could spare him that kind of pain. It would hurt Cordelia again, very deeply, as well. I had to watch her mourn you. Now you intend to run away?"
Trapped. I couldn’t go anywhere. "I’m scared, okay? Does it make you happy to hear me admit it? And I don’t want the people I love to see me this screwed up."
Wesley opened the door totally and walked in. "I know." Guess he figured I’d be fine with him seeing me like this since I didn’t love him.
I didn’t even mind the prying, much. Something in me needed to talk. "My life was strange, but I had a progression going. For example, I wore Cordelia down over months until she demanded I ask her out."
"Surely you’re joking."
"Hell, no. It’s true. But dying made me skip the track. Before I had a fairly straight line, while now my life’s running around mindlessly and chaotically like a chicken that doesn’t know its head got chopped off."
"The fact that it has no eyes would be a factor."
"And here I was thinking I had that covered with the part about it being headless." I didn’t turn to look at him, but I could see him in the mirror. He seemed to be focusing completely on me the way Angel did. "I don’t know what to do, man. It’s not like anybody looked up Lazarus a few years later, asked him how that back from the dead thing was working for him, and wrote it down."
Wesley took his glasses off to wipe them clean or stall for time to put his next try together. Without them, his eyes looked smaller, but his face looked sharper, narrower, feral, more handsome, and almost raw, though not in an unpleasant way. Dangerous. The waif had vanished. I missed the waif, and I didn’t.
I guess we all had a multitude of faces.
Then he put the glasses back on, and the waif returned. It made me wonder, especially since the Knowing told me that he had a self that fit the other face.
"Doyle, I know it’s not the same thing, but being fired by the Council nearly destroyed me. I’d trained to be a Watcher my whole life, never having given a thought to even the idea of becoming anything else, not when my family had served on the Council for centuries. My disgrace humiliated them. They were all so disgusted by me that no one even bothered to get me a ticket back to England. But now I do more good and fight more evil than I ever would have as a Watcher. I’ve found a new and better family."
"You’re cute, I feel bad for what you went through, and I know you’re trying to help and all, but if you say something about God closing a door only to open a window I will not be held responsible for what I may do. Especially since you already told me I wouldn’t be going out any windows."
This time he sounded part kindly and part pissed off. "It’s only that you seem lost, like I was, but at least you already have people who love and care for you. I know they do, and I know you must be a good person from the things Cordelia says and the things Angel couldn’t say about you. You should give them a chance to love you and me a chance to know you."
"The ones who love you can hurt you the most, without meaning to. You see, I did this major life change thing before, Wes. Harry was supportive, and I thought she was pitying me. Turns out she wasn’t, but it’s not like her academic interest in my demon side makes me feel that much better. It’s all well and good to be fascinated if you’re not the one popping out into green spikes or being ambushed by sorcerers and demons wanting body parts for spells."
"I imagine you didn’t exactly want anyone knowing you were a seer, either."
"That’s for sure." Your Council ever do anything like that, Wes? Never mind; I already know. "Anyway, all of her telling me that being half-demon was no big thing and wasn’t that bad made me feel guilty for hurting as much as I did over it. She meant nothing but the best, I know, but it felt like she thought I was whining over nothing, and that hurt me. Which made me one cranky, acid-tongued bastard who was striking out verbally at anything that moved. I don’t want to do all that to anyone I love ever again. Let me just wallow alone in self-pity and try to forget all of this for a while, and everybody’d be happier. I don’t want to have to keep explaining this."
"They don’t think you’ll come back."
Only because they knew me.
Wes rested his hand over mine and stroked lightly, giving me this shivery feeling and making the hairs on my arm rise. He had these long slender fingers like me, but longer and not at all knobby looking like mine were. The touch had this gentle kind of childlike curiosity to it, like he wondered if he would feel spikes waiting under the skin, but... it was more arousing than comforting. No. Not going there, no. I kept staring down at his hand over mine and tried to will it all away, like that ever did any good.
"Doyle, I have my own selfish reasons for wanting you around. There have been times I really wished you were alive to talk to. We’re part of a very small group, you and I."
"People in love with somebody who doesn’t dare let himself get too happy for fear of homicidal ramifications?"
"Just so. Also, I feared for a long time that I was simply a stand-in for you."
Irony. "You’re not."
"I know that now."
Something in his voice made me look up and into the mirror, letting me see his eyes.... Shite. We didn’t need this at all. He was like a purebred greyhound, while I was just a dog. In both the mutt and Ricki Lake senses of the term.
Okay, that wasn’t totally fair to me, really. I was lost and looking for some kind of human connection to prove I was alive, while he was so kind and pretty. I couldn’t help what I felt, but that didn’t mean I had to act on it.
But Wes moved in closer, bringing a heat that made the muscles in my back relax and knot at the same time, and had this bergamot scent that didn’t come from the shampoo and soap he’d leant me. God, it’d kill my mother to know I was lusting after an Englishman. Then again, maybe she’d be so happy to hear that I’d cheated death that I’d have a Get Out of Jail Free card on everything. Nah, I doubted that.
Wes stood so close, so warm, and his hand kept moving on mine in what would have been a soothing way if it hadn’t been getting me so hot. He couldn’t mean it that way, and if he gave off any signals, it had to be from the kind of Angel-based sexual frustration I understood too well.
"Doyle--"
But then we heard the bedroom door open, and Wes’ hand jumped off mine. He gave me a rueful, guilty smile, and I decided to feel relieved. Angel walked into the bathroom, took me into a hug, and said, "I came as soon as I knew you were awake."
Vampire senses. He probably realized that my heartbeat had changed time or something. It still freaked me out to think that he could hear me a room or two away if he concentrated on it. Then he held me out at arms’ length and looked at me, really looked at me. Then he looked at Wes. Then at me again.
I didn’t get it. Until I thought about vampire senses. Oh, shite. I felt like a mouse caught in a snake’s stare. Or a rat caught. Wes’ face suggested that he felt the same way.
Angel looked surprised, then smiled. "I’d hoped you two would get along." Before I could blather stupidly in response, he said in a soft, almost ragged voice, "Please stay, Doyle. Stay. I can’t lose you again, especially not so soon after getting you back."
He brought me back in for another hug, which I drank in. The Knowing didn’t tell me what messages Angel and Wes were passing overhead through eye contact, but I trusted the two of them.
I did, didn’t I? Trusted Angel, Cordelia, and Wesley. And they wanted me around, wanted me around so badly that they were beating me about the head with how badly they wanted me around.
It felt good to be wanted, and I was tired of justifying myself and feeling that my answers were petty. Besides, if things progressed the same way they had with Harry, I could always find a way to remove myself.
"I’ll stay," I murmured into the black silk of Angel’s shirt.
"What was that?" Wes asked.
"I’ll stay. I’ll stay," I said louder.
"Three times," Wes said with some satisfaction, and I felt Angel relax against me. It was good to feel him relax and know I was responsible, but....
I'd just made a binding promise, if you believed in such things.
I sighed. I did.