The New Order III: Souvenir

When I teleported from the Netherworld of Eternal Watching into Cordy's living room, I hit the couch and fell on it. Better than hitting the coffee table. Too tired, I didn't have as much control over how the 'port spat me out. I took the chance to breathe and try to clear the dizziness. While I recovered, I asked Dennis, "You have any idea when our princess will be coming back here?"

The ghost stayed silent at first, then remembered that I could see and hear him now. I didn't know if me seeing him was an Oracle thing, a having been dead myself thing, or both at the same time. "I'm afraid not."

"Thanks." Poor lug loved her. Who wouldn't? I leaned back and closed my eyes... and saw her skin ravaged with boils and burns, saw her screaming. What the hell happened while I was gone? "Dennis! Is she okay?" At his confused look, I said, "The burns, the--"

"They took care of that. She's fine, she's healed. Only the visions bother her now." He gave me a dirty look, knowing full well who gave her the visions.

"If I could take them back, man, I would. In an instant."

He nodded but didn't look totally satisfied. "They keep getting worse. She's in so much pain."

Fuck. "God, Princess, I'm so sorry," I mumbled.

"Isn't there something we can do for her? You're the Oracle."

"I've gone looking, but my fine oracular powers are brought to you by the very same Powers that give her the skull-crushing visions. If They don't want me to know...."

He sat next to me, an almost presence. "But you're the Oracle."

"And does it look like I can even handle my own abilities? I don't even know what day it is!" I could feel him radiating hurt, so I said, "Sorry. I'm kind of tired."

"You look like you're 'kind of' starving as well." Dennis looked kindly stern and distracted all at once. Then he blinked out for a second, returning with a sandwich and a bottle of water, both of which he thrust at me

My throat felt tight. Over a bottle of water and a turkey sandwich. "Thanks, man." I didn't know if I could get the sandwich down, but I'd try. Forgetting to eat too often. No time. I had to choke back a laugh that would have sounded way too hysterical. "Angel back from his Buffy grief retreat?" I had to help clean up a lot of damage from the gate opening myself.

"Yes." He knew I couldn't penetrate the torment haze of Hotel Hell to try to scry this stuff for myself.

"Does our princess still have those blonde streaks?" I asked around a mouthful of turkey. I'd been too distracted by the boils and burning and her agony to notice her hair.

"No."

"Thank God."

Dennis grinned. "I misplaced her boxes of color a few times."

I saluted him with my bottle. "You're a hero."

Months had passed, then. Bad enough that I missed out on seeing her in that Frazetta girl outfit in that other dimension, but I kept missing months. I actually felt Wes get shot, an event I'd had a too vague precog flash on a while before it'd happened, but I hadn't been here. Angel went good again after sex with *Darla*, which made my blood run cold, but I didn't get to see him. In fact, I hadn't seen him good again yet.

I didn't know how I felt about him after everything and all this time. I love him, but I wasn't sure what kind of love it was anymore. Too tired. I had no idea how he felt about me. The Knowing rarely told me anything personally useful.

I still had Wes' watch and tried to wind it every 24 hours. I had no idea if I had it right. I should get one of those self-winding numbers that showed the day too, but it might have been too depressing to constantly match that with real world time. I should give his watch back.

"What have you been up to?" Dennis asked. He tended to ask that, whether out of politeness or wanting to know, not even the Knowing told me.

So I told him that my life, if you could call what I had a life, continued, crazy as ever. I played telephone between various heroic types and the Powers That Be. Fought a basilisk in Germany (and spoke German with three different accents depending on which member of the hero team I spoke with) and helped an embodied aspect of the Morrigan get her arse out of Bosnia. She'd been pretty damned surprised to be there. Somewhere in the telling of it all I passed out.

I woke up with Cordelia's hand on my forehead. "I should wake to the face of an angel every time," I said. Lovely Cordelia. Lovely, lovely red-highlighted sable hair.

Except that the Knowing told me she'd start blonding again soon. Dammit.

She smirked. "You'll have to work harder than that for it." Her hand moved a little. "You feel a bit hot."

"You have to stop feeding me straight lines." Somebody'd put a blanket over me and taken my shoes off. Probably Dennis.

"And what are you doing with your hair?"

"For some reason the Powers That Be don't supply an in-house barber. Ain't that a kick in the head? I'm going to put a complaint in at the suggestion box." Cordy smelled like a few varieties of demon blood and fear, but she looked okay, with no pain from injury or tightness around her eyes and mouth from the visions. "What happened tonight?"

"A mess with Gunn's old crew at Caritas. Don't worry about me. It was worse for Fred than it was for me."

Since Fred never left Hotel Hell, I hadn't met her in person yet. Of course, from the smell on Cordelia's skin and clothing, I could see why the poor girl might want to stay in her room instead.

Then my princess said, "You're coming to bed with me."

"I've died again but gone to heaven this time, right?"

"You're not well, you're thin as a stick, and I can tell that your neck is bothering you from sleeping on the couch. I trust you to be a gentleman. Why, I'm not sure."

I knew why, even if it hurt. I'd lost my chance with her. Too much time had passed, and she'd changed too much. I loved the new Cordy--who was deeper and wiser than she'd once been--even more than the old, but for her I was a long distance friend she didn't get to see or hear from very often. More time passed for her than for me. And I never got enough time with her to change her mind.

"Besides, you'd kill me if I tried anything."

"Exactly," she answered cheerfully.

I took off my jacket and the money belt I kept strapped around my waist, then sank into her bed, reveling in her scent and clean sheets. When she put her hand over mine, it felt rougher than it used to. Monster-slaying princess. I wouldn't dream with her here. I memorized the feel of her hand and the sheets, the warmth and care here, for the cold, lonely times ahead.

To my great surprise and pleasure, I was still in bed with Cordy when I woke up. Thing was, it wasn't the same bed. Different scent in the air and sheets. I smelled grass and old wool. I had my grandmother's afghan, the one that had been stolen from my apartment after I'd died, atop us. "What the hell?"

Pretty room with dark wood walls. Not Cordelia's apartment. From the cool, green smell in the air, we weren't in California either. God, it reminded me of Ireland, but more Ireland than real Ireland, you know? Oh hell, I didn't know either.

"Mmmm?" Cordelia murmured, looking beyond sweet.

"Princess, wake up. I don't know where we are."

She almost hit me springing up and looked ready to attack. Then she took a good look around and said, "This is not what I expected."

"Likewise." The afghan kept tugging at my mind. I got up and went to the closet, where I found the clothing that had also gone missing. Oh, I didn't like this.

Cordelia had found a pair of scissors and looked like she intended to stab the first thing to come at her. The sexy satin nightgown didn't make her look any less determined to wound. "Doyle? What's going on?"

"I don't know." We looked around the house. Nice little kitchen, with a refrigerator stocked with things I liked. Nice little living room and dining room. The leather jackets that had likewise been stolen hung in the closet near the door, and they were definitely *my* jackets. All the wear spots were the right ones, they all vaguely retained my half human, half demon scent, and the oxblood colored one had the correct tear in the lining.

Starting to see the way of things, I ran outside. Oh God. Following me, Cordelia looked impressed. "Doyle, what's going on? Who brought us to the vacation spot?"

"This is sort of my grandmother's cottage in Ireland," I said dully.

"Why sort of?"

"Because it wasn't really. It's a picture my mother used to tell me was it." Because Gran had been too Catholic to own this much property, but I couldn't say that to Cordelia, who may have been whip smart but didn't always concern herself with things that didn't directly affect her. After all, she'd told that enforcer where I lived that time partly because she thought he had a name that sounded like it came from my part of *England*.

But this was that picture come to life. Quaint, pretty little picture of a perfect cottage amidst the green, rolling hills of a sentimentalized Ireland. Not even Irish grass looked this lush and perfectly green. A picturesque stream burbled nearby. Everything wasn't perfectly *real* though, because I was out here in my socks in what was meant to be the morning without any dew soaking into them. But it had been designed off a painting anyway. Probably should consider myself lucky that it didn't all seem to be made of paint like in that syrupy Robin Williams movie.

False. All false.

"It's a bribe from the Powers That Be. Has to be. My own little house in the Netherworld of Eternal Watching," I said. When I'd first taken up the job of Oracle, the Netherworld had been all cold marble. It'd gradually gained grass and a few trees over time. Hell, I kept some of the alcoholic gifts supplicants had given me cold in the stream that had shown up one time and stayed on. All of that had been leading up to this.

"What can I do to get a bribe like this?" she asked.

"There's no shopping here."

"Well, there's room for improvement. You should tell them that it'll take a lot more than this to bribe you. A *lot* more. They should keep trying and giving until they get it right."

I tried to smile, but I was so fucking angry at the Powers. "Cordy, if I have a home here, there shouldn't be any reason for me to go see you guys in the real world. Or so They think."

Fierce princess. "Like hell. You don't have to live where you work. Angel does it, and look at him. We'll fight if we have to."

As much as that warmed me, it also reminded me where we were. Oh shit. "Princess, we're in the Netherworld. I have to get you home fast. I don't know how long we were gone."

"What?"

I grabbed her and hoped the Powers would let me take her back. I *pushed* with my brain, and we showed up in Cordy's living room surrounded by everybody plus a fragile looking girl who had big eyes and a crazy haze to her. Must have been Fred. Looking at her, I saw horror and blood and collars that blew your head off. It gave me a headache.

Wiped out by the 'port, I sank back on the couch while everybody plus started talking at once. I said, "Powers grabbed us. How long were we gone?"

"We last saw Cordelia last night. It's late afternoon now," Wes said.

Okay, could have been worse. Dennis said, "You both just vanished out of the bed. Scared the heck out of me."

I nodded. "Sorry. Wasn't our idea."

"Did the Powers have a message for you?" Wes asked.

"No," Cordelia answered darkly, "They just showed us that They'd be happier if Doyle never came to see us again."

I put my face in my hands. "Which I'd say is a message of sorts."

Angel sat next to me, with Fred's eyes following his every move. I could tell even with my eyes covered. He put his arm around my shoulders. "We don't intend to lose you, Doyle. Not again."

Of course, at that moment I was yanked back without a by your leave into the Netherworld to answer some pimply faced wizard's oh so urgent question about Occari urns. If he thought it strange to see the Oracle bed-rumpled and in his socks, he didn't say a word. He did cringe nicely when I turned green and spiky and yelled at him. I told him what he wanted to know, though. If the Powers had a problem with me also telling him that he could shove the urn up his arse once he found it, They could kiss mine.

In no time by my reckoning, I popped backed into Cordy's living room. Nobody there now, and me with no idea of how much time had passed.

I needed a drink. Or several. I picked up my money belt from the bedroom and called a cab. Cordy didn't keep her place stocked, and Dennis didn't approve of me getting plastered. Wish the teleporting thing worked to take me anywhere I wanted, but that probably would have been too fucking useful.

Not eating enough made me a cheap date, because two scotches in and I'd already passed into the land of feeling no pain. And the land of not being sure where my feet were. Probably still on the ends of my ankles.

I didn't feel good, though, just numb and sleepy. Close enough. I'd seen and felt the echoes of a few decades of depressed boozers when I first walked in here, but once I started drinking it seemed okay. I kept my eyes looking down at my scotch, which actually had fond, gentle memories of its time in the sun rustling in the wind and hadn't minded the harvesting or fermentation processes either, since they were all part of the way of things. Seeing that the glass had been used by countless drunken hands hardly surprised or upset me.

An average looking guy, about mid-thirties, sat next to me at the bar. "Can I buy you a drink?"

And in an instant I knew him. Who he was, what he'd done, what he'd do, as if I'd known it my whole life. I tasted blood and pain. Made me sick. "You think your brother would approve of what you're doing?" I asked.

He went a bit pale but said, "I'm at peace with myself. I love who I love. I'm sorry I disturbed you. I made a mistake." Still playing it.

I sneered and leaned in close, dizzying myself, but I kept an eye on his right side, even if the Knowing said he wouldn't hurt me. That's where he kept his knife and chloroform rag. "You're a sick fuck, Richard. You think killing people will make up for you being an asshole to him before he died? You think he's been looking down on and approving you sodomizing men with broken bottles before you kill them?"

He might have died where he sat for all the life in his face. His mouth hung open a bit. Big, bad, killer homophobe with a self- appointed mission.

"In about three years you'll slip up," I said, "and the cops'll find some of the bodies. You'll be sentenced to 20 years. I know you have a hatred of the big gay sex, so I'm sure being some convict's bitch will not be fun for you. And these guys have nothing better to do with their time than work out, so they're nothing like the scrawny, sick-looking, little guys you like to kill." Gee, wonder why he picked me? "Four years into your sentence you'll have your throat cut with a sharpened dime. Nothing personal; you were just in somebody's way."

As I talked to him, I could see his future changing, now teetering on a cliff edge between two new destinies. Because I'd told him. My head pounded as the warring images flashed in front of my eyes. It hurt, it hurt so bad, and I wanted it to stop. I wanted him to do whatever he needed to link up with one or the other. I wanted to yell at him to get away from me, run. I wanted to say, "If you run now, you'll never go to prison," but I didn't.

Richard Stoff leapt out of his stool on his own and ran out the door. I suddenly heard screeching brakes and a dull thump. His future settled, clearing my headache a little.

As the bartender stared at me, I put down my money and ambled out of the bar. Heat and smog hit me like a hammer. I walked past the crowd gathering around his corpse in the street. It just left me feeling numb. Later I'd send an anonymous tip to the cops about where he'd buried the bodies.

For now I walked, trying to avoid the experience I'd had during the cab ride over. I'd seen-- and smelled --everybody who'd taken a ride in it. Everybody. Excitement and fear and birth and sickness and making out, all concentrated in a small space. The driver had been afraid that I was stroking out. Out on the street I still had that, but it felt more diffused, more bearable.

It had to be that I was just tired and kind of weak. This couldn't be how the Oracle thing would work from now on.

I wouldn't survive it.

I felt people grab me suddenly, but the Knowing told me I was safe. Bergamot and leather, Wesley and Angel half-dragged and half-carried me to the car. My Princess put my head on her lap--oh holy of holies--and stroked my hair. They were going to take me to her house, put me to bed, and worry over me. Thanks, Knowing. I wouldn't have figured that out myself.

The car mostly felt like my friends and their experiences. Well, them and that Lorne guy. Anticipation, fear, adrenaline, and gearing up for battle all felt normal to me.

I kept drifting out, but I could finally feel them stripping me a little, putting me to bed, and hovering, Angel's hand petting my hair. Angel asked, "What's wrong with him?"

Wes answered, "From the look of him, probably fatigue, undernourishment, and overwork. We can take care of that." Wes' voice then sharpened. "You don't have a problem with helping us, do you, Gunn?"

Gunn sounded annoyed and chagrined. "I'm cool."

Hunh? Oh, Gunn's old group had been killing demons indiscriminately, and Gunn hadn't seen a problem with that for the longest time. Then he tampered with the evidence once he figured out his friends had been behind it.

Must've killed Wes having his lover play dirty like that behind his back. Wes had trust issues as it is.

Gunn had seemed to be okay with me before, but maybe that came from me looking human most of the time. Or maybe he'd always had a problem with me being half demon and hadn't said.

Depressed for me and Wes, I sank into sleep.

I moaned and writhed like a total slut as somebody fucked me from behind. Guy's big dick rubbed and filled me just right as he pounded into me, as his big hands left possessive bruises on my body. The friction inside was really something else. I braced against the wall and took it, took all of it, and begged for more.

His hands felt cool, and he had a familiar kind of almost not scent. Angel. Oh, God, Angel.

"Can't do this," I gasped. "Can't. Can't risk getting Angelu--" His teeth nipping the back of my neck drove the thoughts right out of me. Nipping, not biting. I made obscene noises in answer.

He rode me hard and rough and started to jerk my cock with fingers that didn't warm up. I should stop this, but he had me gripped pretty well, it was already too late if we'd gone this far, and I hadn't had sex with anyone other than myself for far too long now. And it felt too good, and the danger was getting me off too since I was such a fucking idiot....

I almost hit the wall I came so hard, then clenched down tight on him. I heard Angel groan, then he humped me five more times before he finished himself.

I shuddered and my heart pounded as he leaned against me. Angelus had his cock up my arse. I expected anything could happen. Maybe he'd just snap my neck; I knew I could survive that if I changed to demon form fast enough.

But he knew that too. Fuck.

Why couldn't I have said no?

Why didn't I remember a choice?

He pulled out, then leaned his back against the wall next to me. I waited for the violence or the gibes. But he just looked tired and... disappointed.

The Knowing told me that he was still Angel, still had a soul.

He turned those disappointed, distant eyes in my direction. "I'm not happy," he said. "I'm not happy at all."

I woke up and shivered for a bit, lost under a wave of despair and half-spent terror. Didn't know where I was, but that was business as usual. Between the coming and the fear-sweating, I'd messed up the sheets real nice.

"Doyle? Are you okay?" Angel's voice. He could probably smell my fear. He could probably smell everything. "Would you like me to turn the light on?"

As much as it warmed me that he'd sat in here to keep watch on me, he was one of the last people I wanted seeing me having this sweet little recurring dream. Okay, I wouldn't exactly want Cordelia, Wes, and Gunn to see it either. I could feel my cheeks burning.

"No," I said quickly. "Well, later. Let me use the bathroom first, then I'll come back and you can turn the light on. If you want to." I scurried into the bathroom, threw off my clothes and wadded them into a ball, then just about fell into the shower. I scrubbed myself for a while and tried for the blankness of mind I used scotch for. Nothing doing though.

But no hangover. The Powers integrating my demon and human sides a bit tighter might have made it harder to get drunk, but whatever they'd done to me also cut back on my hangovers. Good thing, since puking wouldn't improve my evening any. Didn't do anything about the taste in my mouth, so I'd have to brush my teeth and gargle a bit.

I stayed in the shower for as long as I could. Once I hit the point where I figured that Angel would crash in through the door worried about me in a few more minutes, I got out and changed into the set of clean underwear and old, cotton pajamas I kept in here. With the way my life ran, this little precaution had saved me a lot of grief.

Just wearing pajamas made me feel a little closer to normal. I usually slept in my clothes.

Normal. Ha.

Considering the guy in the mirror in front of me, I could see why everybody treated me like I was made of glass. I looked ill and lost and too pale even for me. I had too much pain in my eyes.

Once upon a time I'd been the kind of guy you wouldn't mind having teach your 8-year-old for a year. Hell, I was told that parents hoped their kids would get me. Me, the fine, upstanding, confident, married guy who volunteered at the food bank because he was such a great guy with so many great things in his life that he wanted to give his time to help other people and who hoped to be a father one day. He had a normal life.

Until he found out that he was half demon and realized that he didn't know a damned thing about anything after all. If the path to wisdom started when you admitted that you knew nothing, I was so there.

Four years later I was a divorced, demon half-breed Oracle who'd come back from the dead. No confidence. No loving wife. No kids. I had no idea if I was keeping track of the time right, but I figured I was 25 now. I looked older and more careworn than that, especially if you looked into my eyes. Angst did that to a guy. I couldn't keep my hair under control, let alone my life.

When I walked back out into the bedroom, I saw that Angel had turned the light on. And changed the sheets. "You didn't have to do that, man," I said. Really.

Images of Darla clung to him, but she looked fucking huge in them for some reason. And she called him "Daddy" in that annoying breathy voice she used. Did I *want* to know?

Yeah, actually I did.

Like that ever made a difference since the Knowing couldn't care less about what I wanted.

She smelled like blood and desperation, when usually she smelled like blood and strong, musky perfume. Weird to be so familiar with someone I never met. Nor had any desire to meet.

When Angel settled on the bed, the visions and scent of Darla faded away. "Sit with me." I sat and leaned into him after he pulled me closer. "I'm sorry for how I was the last time you saw me."

Angel had been frightening the last time, and as Angel, not as Angelus. "Just don't do it again." Don't go evil or fuck Darla again. Please.

He seemed much cheerier now, less broody, than he'd been even before he'd gone bad, which was great. Less like Angel, but still, the guy could use a little happiness.

Though not perfect happiness, since that led to Angelus Land. Well, he didn't have to worry about being perfectly happy while around me, that was certain.

"How'd you guys find me?" I asked.

"Cordelia had a vision."

Damn. "I'll have to tell her I'm sorry I put her out like that."

"This one wasn't too bad."

Sure. Probably just gave her a migraine instead of smashing her skull all the way through. Not too bad. Great.

Angel pulled me in close and leaned me against him. I wasn't helping much. Who would've thought that he'd become a "put on a happy face" guy? My Angel liked to sit in corners and brood silently. He also liked it when I tried to jolly him out of his broods. Made him feel cared for, he once said.

Well, I wasn't him. It just made me feel like a cranky ingrate having him trying to cheer me up when I didn't feel like being cheered. Then I felt bad that I resented it so much. I sighed and hid my face in the cool, dark silk of his shirt. Never understood why people liked silk, since it felt weirdly slippery and alive to me.

Then I felt it, a Knowing as clear as day. Angel didn't love me anymore. Oh, he loved me as a friend, but not as a lover, not anymore. I'd been gone too long.

I'd known all along that he didn't love me all operatic-like, the way he did with Buffy, the love that transcends all and eats you alive when you're away from your loved one, but I'd been content with what we had, the more everyday kind of love. I was there; she wasn't.

Except that now I wasn't there, and Angel had gotten on with his unlife. I didn't even come in third after Buffy and Darla anymore.

This was worse than being dead.

Somehow, despite the gnawing despair, I must've fallen asleep again, because I woke up under the covers, same bed, but this time in pajamas. Somebody different sat in the chair this time. "Wes, surely you guys have something better to do than watch me sleep."

He sat in a small puddle of light reading some big, leather-bound tome. "Actually, at the moment we don't."

"Paying clients aren't pouring in, huh?"

"You could say that."

Wes was growing out his hair, and right now it had a wild wave going on. It looked sloppy, but I liked it for that. It suggested that he was loosening up. Gunn probably had a lot to do with it. I asked the Knowing how things were between them after that bit with Gunn's old gang at Caritas, but the Knowing told me nothing. Figured.

"Wes, your watch--"

"It's on the table. In any case, it's your watch now."

"What can I do with a watch? You gave it to me as a gift, and now I'm giving it back."

"Then I thank you. Would you like some soup?"

Would I? Didn't know. While I dithered deciding, Wes walked out and turned on a can opener. Looked like I was having soup.

When Wes came back, my vision blinked, and I saw him walking down a hallway with an axe in his hand and the scariest wrong feeling to him. Then it was just Wes, carrying a tray with soup on it and wearing a worried look on his face. "Doyle?"

"I have no idea." Was it so much to ask for some fucking context? I guess it was, since that would make the visions *useful*. "Thanks, Wes," I said as I lifted a spoon of chicken soup and started to eat.

But as the food started to clear the cobwebs away, I remembered that Cordy and Angel had gotten over me, and I felt a lot less hungry. Was it even fair to them to expect them to wait for me to turn up sporadically and unexpectedly every few weeks or so? I wouldn't wish that kind of half-life on anybody. Not on them... and not on me either.

"Doyle."

"Yeah?"

"Is something wrong?"

Since I kept stirring my soup with my spoon instead of actually eating it, I guess. "Nah. Just not hungry." Now that I knew what I had to do. I set the tray and soup aside to get a change of clothes.

"Where are you going?" Wes asked, standing up.

He'd try to stop me if I told him. "Got something I have to do."

Wes wasn't having it. "There's nothing you have to do except eat and rest."

I tried to go into the bathroom to change, but Wes slammed the door shut in front of me. Fine. I'd strip down to my underwear and get dressed in front of him. "Oracle business," I said as I unbuttoned my pajama top and took it off.

"Liar."

Go away, Wes. "I don't have to explain myself to you." I pulled one of my black T-shirts over my head in a few sharp, jerky movements. It was bigger on me than it used to be.

"You promised to stay. Three times you promised."

"It was a mistake," I snarled. "I'm hurting myself by sticking around. It was hurting them too before, but now that they've distanced themselves, it doesn't hurt them as much. Which is good for them--I don't want them to be in pain--but I don't wanna be in pain either. I can't live like this. I promised to stay, but I didn't say for how long."

"So you'll return to the Netherworld of Eternal Watching and never come back? That is exactly what the Powers want you to do: cut yourself off from all humanity that isn't coming to you wanting something."

"You think I don't know that? I have no choice."

Wes grabbed my wrist, and in my anger I popped out into my green spiky demon self in response, not that I had any spikes on my wrists. With all he's seen, my spikes, scaly skin, and red eyes didn't intimidate him at all. Didn't know if he realized that I could yank his arm out of his socket, though.

Maybe it was enough for him to know that I wouldn't.

"You say that Cordelia and Angel don't love you anymore. Did you see that or *Know* it? If the Powers want you to cut all ties to us, They could be lying through the Knowing."

"Saw it," I spat back, even though I'd only seen it for Cordy and Known it for Angel. But, but.... Oh, God. I started to shake as the implications hit me. "If the Knowing's lying to me, you might as well kill me now, Wes. I don't always realize when I'm using something the Powers tell me, because it feels like something I already had. I'll go crazy if I have to doubt everything in my head."

He put his hands on my shoulders a bit awkwardly and squeezed, trying to be soothing. I always felt less comfortable in Bracken form so I shifted back to my human self, which turned out to be a big mistake, since I felt tears in my eyes now. Talk about embarrassing. But Wes' idea had dropped into my mind like a poisonous seed and put out roots.

Too much. Just... too much.

I must've looked every bit as panicked as I felt, because Wes, really subdued, said, "I'm sorry. I--"

"It's not the kind of thing you can unsay once you put it out there."

He gently pushed me down onto the bed, as if I didn't already have to look up at him to see his face, seating me. "It had to be said."

"I'm glad I brought it up to you, Wes, 'cause I feel so much better now," I said, letting the sarcasm drip like poison, trying to hide the full extent of how scared I felt now.

Then I didn't have any room for fear because something hit me, hard. Pictures, words, thoughts, fuck! I fell backward and lost control of my mouth. Darla, a child, the prophecy, the guy, birth from death from birth from death....

Through it all, I heard Wes ask, "When?" and felt his hand on my head.

"Don't know. Soon. They're coming. Coming to Hotel Hell."

"Hotel-- Oh, the Hyperion. This... guy. Who is he?"

"Wants them dead. Wants his revenge. Darla and Angelus killed his family and he wants his pound of flesh in return. He's old but he skipped a few. He *hates*...."

Angel's voice, Angel's hand on the side of my face. "Can you tell me more about the guy? It doesn't narrow it down much that Darla and I destroyed his family."

I opened my eyes to look up at him. "I don't have anything else to say. I don't know."

Looking worried and a bit distant, Angel released my face with a final caress. "It's something to go on. Thanks, Doyle."

I was lying sprawled on the bed, drained. "Oh, no problem, Angel." It still beat the old skull-crushing feel of my original visions.

And Cordelia was at an audition, making me even gladder that she'd skipped the vision this time.

"Darla," Angel said.

"I'm afraid so."

"I guess I can hit the underground and see if anyone's heard of her being back in town."

"Yeah. That's a good idea."

"How are you?"

"Tired, but fine. Go, Ainge."

Once he left the room, I closed my eyes. Seeing and Knowing. Now I saw as well as Knew that Angel had moved on.

Then somebody kissed me, sweet and comforting. When it ended, I said, "That was... really nice, Wes," as I opened my eyes.

Kneeling astride me on the bed, he smiled a little, wryly. "Only 'nice'?"

"'Really nice,' I said." And I Knew that he and Gunn were over, that Gunn covering for his old crew's killing spree and words said inside Caritas and in an alley outside had changed things forever. Just as Angel going bad almost a while ago had ended *that* relationship. Wes was alone, like I was.

Another kiss, and I gave myself up to it. We'd felt an attraction and sympathy from just about the first time we met, but something had always gotten in the way. But now I was here for a while and neither of us was going with Angel.

But.... "You have to know that sometimes when I get really excited my head pops out into spikes without me meaning it," I said.

"I know. I also know they're coated with a substance that can cause anything from hallucinations to death if it enters the bloodstream. I've heard that some Watcher students once captured a Bracken purely for substance use. They were licking his spikes."

My head hurt too much for me to laugh like this. "What happened to them?"

Wes took off his glasses, and without them his face looked harder, sharper, and much less civilized. "Their own stupid actions punished them. I also know that the spikes aren't very sharp on those with mixed blood."

Wow, one of my usual worries about sex, namely being found out, knocked out of the way before it even became a problem. Wes knew.

We started out slow and comforting but quickly turned hungry, almost literally, since our mouths and teeth had to be leaving marks the way we were going. He said something about my skin tasting like almonds. I didn't know how long he'd gone without, but my long dry spell left me wilder than usual, so wild that it amazed me that he could stay on top during it all. He cursed in what may have been a dead language as his sex-clumsy fingers fumbled at the snaps on my pajama bottoms, while I snarled back that he had to start wearing clothes with fewer buttons. Every touch of bare, hot skin made me want more. God, I wanted him to fuck me, I ached for it, but I didn't dare ask, not when I Knew we had no supplies and I'd been places that made me cringe at the thought of him sticking his dick in me unprotected.

Well, gee, guess I'd have to settle for hot, fast, nasty, and non-penetrating. I'd find a way to live with it.

But he had me sucking on his long fingers, then trailed them down my cock, across my balls, over the spot behind them, and finally circling at my rim. "Please," I gasped as I spread my legs more, then groaned at the nearly painful burn as he slid a finger in. Hadn't done this in so long, too long, and I wanted it.

Maybe he knew, since he'd been involved with Angel too for a while and faced the same, "no moments of true bliss allowed" sexual limitations there.

There were no sexual triangles at Angel Investigations. Sexual polygons maybe. No, I think flow charts would be necessary....

"Am I hurting you?" he asked as he slid a thumb in maddening circles over the slick head of my cock at the same time.

I couldn't tell from his tone whether he was joking or not, so I said, "No. More. Do more," sound part brain-damaged and part sluttish, but I couldn't help myself.

Flushed, mussed, he smiled, and his fingers worked me inside and out, stroking, sliding over all the right places. I'd missed this, connection, sex, affection, missed it so much. I came shouting, my fingers digging into his skinny hips. Seeing as how I wasn't a total bastard, the moment my body stopped bucking and my mind cleared a bit, I took hold of his cock and did my own magic finger tricks until I wrung an orgasm out of him too. Oh, yeah, I really enjoyed watching Wes get uninhibited and messy.

"No spikes," he said as he stroked the side of my face. "I shall have to try harder next time."

Next time, huh? "Don't take it as some kind of critique. It doesn't always happen." I licked his ear. "I'm satisfied. I'll be more giving next time."

Too satisfied to get up and go anywhere. Tricky bastard, that Wesley. Still, it felt good to think that somebody still wanted me.