Angel is not mine. Neither are the people I mention here.
It belongs to Joss and Fox. I'm kinda jealous.
This story percolated for a while and now it's a reality. If you hate it, please complain to the McCain campaign. If you love it, accolades can be directed at me.
A
Kathy.
He remembers Kathy
His sister.
He has forgotten her, he realizes. Forgotten who she was – what she was like – in his mad rush to get away from the things he has done in his unlife. The things that maybe he can now mend. Or start to mend.
But for now he remembers Kathy.
Kathy, who cried every night until he sang her to sleep for the first five years of her life. He remembers the feel of her favorite dress, the smell of flowers she would pick just for Liam, the sheen of her hair in the sun.
And he sees, in that moment, the day she took her first step for his eyes alone. Her first true step, crusing along beside the chair, when she let go and smiled and took one step just for Liam, and then grabbed back onto the chair again. He misses Kathy, for the first time in a century.
N
It was dreams he missed the most. Dreams of Connor's first tooth, first step, first word. The tux for his senior prom, his first bike, his first friend. He can still see his son's smile – not the angry young man he is beginning to know, but the baby he would have given anything to raise – he sees the baby smile, hears the first chuckle, the pattern of his heartbeat.
Sometimes he still wakes in the night, sure he heard his son cry out, only to remember that that part of his life is over forever.
And yet not, because he knows Connor remembers now. He knows it, like he knows which way is up and that the sun sets in the west. He feels it. The feeling sustains him.
G
Oddly enough, he thinks of Chantarelle. A girl he saw briefly in the Sunset Club in Sunnydale, the night Buffy insisted on trusting him. The night he learned how much she loved him.
He remembers Chantarelle, how lost she was, remembers her scent, and realizes that she isn't lost, not anymore. She is alive, in L.A. She helps people.
She is why he fights.
E
There are always possibilities, he has learned, but he also knows possibilities are finite. His life with Cordelia proved that. For one brief moment, she was his, possibly, maybe -
And then it was over, and he couldn't prevent her death. There is no moment they can point to and say, "There. That was the moment that killed her."
So instead he sees her smile, her laugh, the smell and taste of waffles and chocolate and Chanel. He remembers her throwing herself at him when she was just a child. She was so young then.
She grew up too fast.
Even as he loved who she became, he wishes her world had been fair enough to let her remain as she was.
L
Plain yogurt and sunshine.
Chocolate and peanut butter.
The day, his day as a human, Doyle, who looked at him and saw.
Doyle, who understood.
Doyle, who would understand now.
Doyle, who is keeping score.
A ticking clock, sex on the table, the floor, the bed.
Blonde hair tickling his nose, apples, the feel of a heartbeat.
ANGEL
All of these are gone now.
With the flick of a pen and a few drops of blood.