Love is not a man's invention

by Harriet Vane

Doyle becomes bewitched

Historian's note: This immediately proceed Sense and Sensitivity

Disclaimer: the characters are not mine, the story is, the song is by Over the Rine on their CD "Besides" IF I left anything out I'm sure you've read enough of these to fill it in.

Love is not a Man's Invention

"What are you doing?" Cordelia demanded as she walked into Angels office around ten on Thursday morning.

"Workin'," Doyle responded with a roughish grin. "A foreign concept for you, I'm sure."

"As it happens I was working very hard," as if to prove her point she hoisted several huge department store bags thump heavily on the desk. "Don't let him look in any of these," she said before continuing on her former train of thought. "Do you have any idea how hard it is to shop for a vampire who has lived for two hundred years and has been, like, everywhere?!"

Doyle leaned backward in the chair, "No," he said, looking at the huge bags with a mix of amusement and horror. "Can't say I've ever thought about it."

"Well you should have," Cordy said, accusingly. "You know, his birthday is coming up."

"His birthday?" Doyle asked skeptically.

"Well, I've been hinting for like, ever, trying to get him to disclose that little morsel of a fact but I swear the guy is like, made of iron or something!"

"Made of iron?"

"He won't let anything slip!"

"And how does that make him like iron?"

"The man has no concept of accepting subtle hints," Cordy exclaimed, not noticing the snideness in her friend's voice. "So I finally decided to swallow my pride and I called Giles . . ."

"The watcher?"

"And he's got no clue, So he tells me the day Angel became a vampire, 'thanks, like that's helpful'."

Doyle leaned in as she continued, her narratives were always so interesting, and it wasn't just the pretty face and figure. The way she talked and kept glancing at him to emphasize certain points and glancing away when she thought he would not approve of what she said. He wouldn't have traded a moment of listening to her talk for all the tea in china, or perhaps more appropriate, all the Guinness in Dublin.

"I mean, the day you die and become a soulless evil vampire who murders thousands is not exactly a day you want to celebrate, right." She glanced at him for affirmation and he nodded vaguely, so she continued with her mile a minute pace. "So I think, how about the day he got back his soul and as it turns out, the watchers aren't to sure of that either, because as it turns out he was hanging out in the woods for like three years, and they know that for some of that time he was evil and hunting and for some of it he was all guilt ridden and if I only knew the names of the gypsy clan that cursed him originally I'm sure they would know, but the only person for the clan that I ever met was Miss Calendar, and she's dead."

"Sorry," Doyle said softly.

"Don't tell me, tell Giles, he was the one with the hots for her. Anyway I keep thinking, I know the day he got his soul back for the second time, but that's the exact same day he got sucked into hell."

"Not an event one would want to commemorate," Doyle observed.

Cordy tilted her head, pleased that she had trained the young Irishman so well. "Exactly, so I think what about when he came back from hell. Because, emerging from the torment-filled world of the dead, is almost like being born."

"Well, I'm not quite sure . . ."

"And the great thing is I'm pretty sure about the date too, at least I know what week it was in."

"You do?"

"Yeah, I was there. Well, not there there in the sense that I was actually . . ."

"There?"

"But I was there afterwards and Buffy's a pretty accurate little slayer, especially when it comes to former honeys. I'm sure she had a real good idea."

"So when exactly is Angel's No-Longer-in-hell day?" Doyle asked gamely. "And where can I get a card?"

"Tomorrow," Cor said excitedly. "We're throwing him a surprise party."

"A surprise party, are you sure that's a good idea?"

"You don't think he'll figure it out, do you?"

"No, I'm pretty sure that Angel will never see the No-longer-in-hell party coming. What I'm worried about is how clever it is to surprise a vampire who spends the better part of his days fightin' the evil in the world. The only kind of surprises he's used to are usually covered in slime."

"Which is exactly why we need to throw him this party," Cor said firmly.

Doyle could she that she, like the rock of Gibralter, would not be moved. With a sigh he relented, "What do you have in the bags?" he asked, hoping to change the subject.

Cor's countenance blossomed, "Just wait till you see what I got him, you'll die."

"Can't say I'm looking forward to that," Doyle muttered as she dug through her bags and finally pulled out her gift and held it up for the Irishman to see.

"So, what do you think?" Cordy asked nervously as she held up her gift for Angel. It was one of those sweaters that clung to your body, the style that Angel liked because he had body worth clinging to. But, unlike most of Angel's wardrobe it was not dark and tasteful. It was canary yellow. "Well?" Cordy demanded.

"Um," Doyle said, choosing his words carefully. "It's certainly . . . bright."

"Isn't it?!" She said, folding it back up and putting it in the box. "I looked all over for it. Do you have any idea how hard it is to find nice clothes in bright colors."

"I wonder why?" Doyle muttered.

"No," Cordy said, not noticing his parenthesis. "I guess you wouldn't."

"It's a lovely shirt," Doyle said, trying very hard to make his voice sound convincing, "But don't you think it's a little . . . chipper for our man Angel."

"That's exactly the point," Cordy said with enthusiasm. "All the doom and gloom around here just escalates until there's nothing but darkness in the office," she looked at him with a smirkish smile on her face. "I actually found myself looking at black nail polish," she laughed disgustedly, "Oz wore black nail polish."

Doyle shrugged, "Worked for him."

"We need more brightness in the office, and seeing as actual sunlight will make some tasty barbequed boss, I think a sun shinny shirt every now and then will brighten the day."

"It's a lovely shirt, really," Doyle said, "And the idea is . . . sweet. But I really don't think it's right for Angel."

"What are you saying?" Cordy accused.

"Only that your gift, while very nice and considerate, may not be as perfect a thing as ya think," he said as he pushed himself away from the desk, allowing her to sit down at her usual seat while he collapsed on the couch.

"You see, you an' me princess, we get up in the mornin' with a smile on our faces and the need to wear bright colors, every now and then. But Angel, he's different. When he rolls out of that bed of his around noon he doesn't get a chance to see the sunshine or hear the little birds a twitterin'. An' he can't think of what a great life it is because the fact is . . . for him it isn't." Doyle paused before leaning in and continuing softly, "He can't be happy, Cordy, not perfectly, and not really."

"And there for he can't wear yellow?"

"Call me closed minded, but in his shoes, I wouldn't see that as a viable option."

"Viable," Cordelia said crossly, upset that Doyle had de-bunked her gift so completely. "Is that Pee-Wee Herman's word of the day?"

"Ha ha," Doyle said, trying but not succeeding, to enjoy her cutting humor. "You know," he said, scratching his ear. "You tend to underestimate people."

"What?" Cordelia demanded.

"Now don't get me wrong princess, I think the world of you . . ."

"Right."

"But if you had a more positive outlook a other people, it would be easier for them to have a positive opinion of you."

Cordelia laughed dismissively, unable to accept the idea that Doyle might just see something that she couldn't. "So what, when I look at you I shouldn't see drunken slob, I should see a intoxicated man with no taste."

"Yeah," Doyle said pushing himself off of the couch. "You're catching on real quick."

"Doyle I . . ." she started, realizing that she should also think before she spoke.

"You know I think I'd better go out and get a present, I don't want to be outshone."

Cordy wanted to tell him not to leave, she wanted to apologize and ask him to continue his train of thought. And he gave her the chance by pausing and glancing at her from the doorway. But instead of saying I'm sorry, she said "Do you think you could pick me up a cappuccino on your way back?"

"Yeah," Doyle said before he walked through the door and it banged shut behind him.

***

Lawyers should not ride the subway. Tarrisa's mother had told her that several times, along with stories of 'the old country' where the Communist packed everyone in little, rickety busses on their way to factory jobs where they were stuck, forever. This was America, you could do a job you love and be paid ludicrous amounts for it. And with those piles of cold hard cash, why not buy a huge car that guzzled gas because, hey you had money, you could afford it.

But Tarrisa loved the subway, she loved the dark underside of the city. She loved looking at what others refused to look at and seeing those who prayed they would not be seen. She had power over those people and there was nothing she liked more than power.

The subway slowed to a halt and the doors opened, people got off, people got on. One person in particular got on. A relatively poor young man who sat in his seat, humming quietly to himself while reading the leftovers of a newspaper that someone had left. There was something about him, Tarissa could feel it, something bigger than he, something super-natural he wore, the same way he wore that faded leather jacket. She watched him intently, although he didn't know it. She willed him to reveal the other worldly aspect of himself to her and, as if her will held some cosmic force, he did.

"Damn!" Doyle shouted, right before he fell forward onto the subway's filthy floor, holding his head in both hands.

Every passenger on the car saw him, and most passengers edged away, whispering things like 'God, I hate druggies,' or 'I hope he's alright' or 'someone should help him', but in the end, only two people who approached were Tarissa and a rather shabby looking priest who just happened to have gotten onto the car at the last stop.

Tarissa glared at the priest, the stupid old man didn't see it. He was preoccupied with the poor man having fits on the floor. The priest had no business meddling in this, she thought bitterly, he shouldn't be playing with something he couldn't possibly comprehend. All he was working on was a vague notion of good will towards men, and what they were dealing with could hardly be called a man. Tarissa had a purpose, a design, and by that right, she should be the one to help him.

"There you are son," The priest said with saintly kindness, as he helped Doyle into a sitting position. "Are you alright?"

"Yeah," Doyle said, his voice shaking slightly. "Fine," the car slowed to a stop and a grate majority of the people in the car got out. "Wha' stop is this?" He asked groggily, desperately wanting to get out and find Angel.

"My stop," Tarissa said, announcing her presence for the first time. She watched, amused, as the young Irishman looked at her dark hair, light skin, and perfect figure. He, like every man she had ever met, was stunned. She had power. "Why don't you come with me, we can go to my apartment and get you something cold to drink."

"Um," Doyle stuttered, "I . . . ah,"

"Decide now," she said in a breathy voice. "You're not gonna get another chance."

"I have to make a phone call," he said nervously as he, with the priest's help, found his feet.

""I have a phone," She smiled an enchantress' smile at him. "I won't even charge you a quarter."

She was beautiful, she was kind, and she was willing to help him, Doyle was undone. "Alright," he said uncertainly before he followed her out of the car.

She glanced behind her to see that he was indeed following, but also to see the expression on the priest's face. He was worried. Maybe he's more astute than I thought, she mused, but with a chuckle, dismissed it.

"So what was that?" she asked as they walked up the subways stairs onto a sun-soaked L.A. street in one of the nicer parts of the city.

"What was what?" The Irishman asked. He was still uncertain and nervous, Tarissa started to think of ways to alleviate that. Her first move as a flirtatious laugh and an absent-minded hand flung on his forearm.

"That! The painful convulsions in the subway, don't tell me you forgot."

"Oh," Doyle said, smiling wearily. His voice became more confident while his eyes started wandering. She could tell he was about to lie. "I'm epileptic."

"Oh," she said, as if she had bought it fully. "So that was a seizure."

He laughed, relived, "Exactly."

"Do you need to go to the hospital or something?"

"No," Doyle said quickly. "No, I'm really fine, I just need to call my friend."

"Well here's my building," she said, as they came up to a very modern, classy, high rise.

"Nice place," Doyle muttered. He was trying to find the top floors but they were hopelessly lost in the smog.

"I like it," Tarissa said as the doorman held opened the huge glass doors for her.

"Good day Miss Sherman."

"Good Day Robert."

"Is this a guest, Miss Sherman?"

"Yes, Robert this is," She paused, and then started laughing. "God, I don't even know your name, I'm so sorry!"

"Ah, Doyle," he said nodding. So much affluence was making him uncomfortable. Tarissa could see that he was a second away from rabbiting, she had to get him where she could control him quickly.

"I'm Tenny, God, I can't believe we forgot that!"

"And how long will the gentleman be staying, Miss Sherman?" Robert the door man asked, totally ignoring the scruffy Irish man.

"I don't know," Tarissa said slyly

"Not long," Doyle asserted.

Robert glanced at him but then decided to let it pass. "Very good Miss Sherman."

"Isn't it?" she asked no one in particular before linking her arm in Doyle's and leading the young man to the elevator like a sheep to the slaughter.

They reached the twenty-third floor and she let him off the elevator to her spacious apartment.

"This is beautiful," he said with some wonder, admiring the light that was flowing into the place through the huge windows. He, as a general rule, liked shadows, but that's because they were comfortable. Light made him slightly nervous, but he was continually awed by it.

"Here's the phone," she said, tossing him a wireless phone. "Are you in the mood for cold or hot?"

"Wha'?" he asked. Everything in the apartment, including the phone he was holding, was white. He was afraid to do anything for fear that he would get it dirty.

"Drinks, remember?"

"Oh," Doyle stuttered, "Um . . . hot?"

"Tea or coffee?"

"Tea."

She smiled, "I should'a guessed." The pair stood looking at each other for a moment, both struck by the fact that they were literally night and day. "Well?" she finally prompted. "You gonna make the call?"

"Oh," he stuttered, turning back to the phone. "Right." He looked at it for a moment before looking back up at her, "I don't suppose there's anyplace that'll be private?"

She smiled, she had him. "The bedroom, over there."

He smiled back at her, "Thanks."

***

"Angel Investigations, we help the hopeless."

"Hey Cordy," Doyle's rather urgent voice said clearly across the phone line. "Can I talk to Angel?"

"Sure, did you get his gift?"

"Cordy, It's kinda important."

"So is the no-longer-in-hell party!" She insisted. "Now it starts in an hour and I don't want to be the only one there with a gift. It'll look like I'm kissing up to the boss or something."

"I think you pretty much assured that impression with the party," Doyle informed her.

"All I want to do is put some brightness in the evil fighting and all I get is criticism."

Doyle sighed, "It's a great idea," he said supportively, knowing full well that you could not argue with Cordelia and expect to win. "You're really considerate, can I talk to Angel?"

"God, what's your problem, would it kill you to be social?"

"It could very well kill somebody," Doyle said in a hushed voice, "I had a vision."

"I'll transfer you right away."

"T'anks," Doyle muttered. He waited for a moment that seemed entirely too long before Angel's urgent voice appeared on the other end of line.

"Doyle," he said by way of greeting, "What did you see?"

"The old cemetery for the dust bowlers,"

"I know the one."

"A couple a kids are gonna be there tonight."

"And?"

"I'm not sure," Doyle admitted, "I just saw the kids."

"Right, where are you?"

"Down town,"

"Get back here as soon as possible, since we don't know what we're doing we'll have to be ready to deal with anything."

"Right," Doyle said. "I'll be there as soon as I can."

The line went dead and Doyle headed to the door, set on running back to his friends, the beautiful woman who had let him use her phone had all but slipped from his mind. Until she came into the bedroom with two steaming cups of tea.

"Thirsty?" she asked, holding out one of the mugs.

"I'm sorry, Tenny, but something came up, and I've gotta get going."

Tarissa was not about to let him do that. "Oh, come on," she pouted. "You can't stay for a cup of tea."

"'Fraid not."

"What's so urgent?" she demanded, "You owe me that?"

"Business."

"What business?"

"I . . . I can't say."

"We'll make a deal," she said, "You stay and have a cup of tea, which I feel I should point out is already made, or you explain to me why you can't. I think that's fair." She paused for a moment, "Don't you?"

He looked at her tentatively, before setting the phone down on a night stand and taking the steaming mug out of her hand.

"Good," she said, "That's what I hoped you'd do." She sat on the bed and patting the space next to her indicated he should sit close. He complied.

"So, Doyle," she said with false candor as she watched him sip his tea. "Is that a first or last name?"

"Last," he said, "This tea is hot."

"We can talk until it cools," she dismissed. "So, Doyle, you have a first name I presume?"

"Allen, but I go by Doyle."

"I like the name Allen, it's very noble."

"No one has ever called me Allen," Doyle explained, "it was my father's name."

"And Doyle wasn't?"

"No," he said simply. "That was my mothers."

"So people've called you Doyle your whole life."

"In a sense."

"In what sense haven't they?"

"Well, when I was younger people called me Francis, 'smy middle name."

"You mind if I break the mold and call you Allen?"

"Why?"

"I want to be distinctive."

"I guess," Doyle said uncertainly.

"So how long have you been epileptic?"

Doyle chuckled humorlessly, "Since I was twenty-one, actually."

"Did something happen? Did you bump your head or something, or did you just wake up one morning epileptic?"

"Pretty much the latter," Doyle said somberly.

"After your little episode, shouldn't you be SLEEPY?" she asked, emphasizing the last word. Suddenly, he was overpoweringly groggy. "That is what happens, isn't it?"

Doyle opened his mouth to say that it had never happened before, but instead he yawned as the world around him slowly became a blur. "I . . . ah . . . hum . . ."

"Need to go to bed," she said definitively, taking his mug a second before he dropped it. "Why don't you just rest here," she said as she pulled off his shoes and laid him in her bed. Doyle would have struggled, insisted that he go find Angel, or at least find his own apartment. But he was long gone, slumbering at least as deeply as Snow White or Sleeping Beauty.

Tarissa smirked a smile and grabbed the phone, punched number one on speed dial and didn't even worry about her voice waking the half-demon sleeping on her bed.

"Wolfram and Heart," The chipper secretary said. "To whom may I direct your call?"

"Hey Gennie, this is Sherman, I stubbled across something in the subway, I'd like to talk to whichever of the board members who'll listen."

"Yes Miss Sherman," Gennie said. "Hold for a second and I'll patch you right through."

***

"So?" Cordy asked timidly as Angel walked back into the office. "Did he show?"

"No."

"But you got it?"

"Two kids were messing around. They would have raised a Trannies Demon if I hadn't been there."

"Good," Cordy said, reaching for the soft package under her desk. "I really wanted Doyle to be here for this but . . ."

"Then wait," Angel said, his eyes focused on something in another world.

"But . . ."

Angel turned and focused his frighteningly intense eyes on her, "You said that already."

"What's wrong?"

The vampire took a deep breath, even though he didn't have to. "Nothing, I just have an ominous feeling."

"Ominous how?"

"I don't know," he pounded his fist on Cordy's desk. It rattled under the force, but it didn't break. "Go home," he ordered.

"Angel I . . ."

"Go," he ordered.

"IF something is . . ."

"If something is I'll tell you in the morning."

"I think I deserve an explanation."

"I told you, if something is I'll tell you in the morning."

Cordy nodded as she pushed herself away from the desk and grabbed her bag. "Everything will be Ok, right?"

"Of course," he said, much lighter than he had been talking before, apparently, he had figured out how much his tone upset Cordelia. "I'm just worried."

"You see, here's the thing," Cordy said, taking the inch Angel offered, and taking a mile because she knew she could. "I'm worried too."

"We shouldn't be, you know," Angel said. "He's an adult."

"Pending on the definition of the word," Cordy muttered.

"The point is he can take care of himself," Angel told himself, more than he told Cordy. "He did manage to survive on his own, without us, for twenty-five years."

"Yeah, and lets look at how well he did."

"We're being interlopers."

"I think you mean antelopes."

"What?"

"There's no such animals as antelopers."

"No," Angel said, blinking. "Interlopers, trespassers."

"We haven't gone anywhere near his apartment," She snapped excitedly, "Maybe we should!"

"No!" Angel said. "That's just it, we shouldn't interfere in his personal life. It's his business."

"As I recall, it's your business. You may be mister demon slayer, but he's Mr. Demon name taker, and if he's too busy to take names . . ."

"We'll cross that bridge when we come to it."

"Yeah," she said, eyeing the place, just behind Angel, where the yellow sweater was hidden. "What if he burns that bridge in front of us?"

"This is Doyle were talking about here," Angel reminded her.

Cordy laughed and glanced away. "You right, he's probably just drunk."

***

Tarissa walked around the large bed were Doyle was sleeping in a lace teddy and high heels. She sprinkled rose powder mixed with the dried blood of a child, the down of a dove, and a little of her hair mixed with a little of Doyle's on his sleeping body. She may have been a lawyer but every witch had to have a day job. Besides, the kind of lawyer that she was, witchcraft was an asset.

LATIN CHANT

She clapped and simultaneously thunder clapped, and Doyle shot up in the bed. "Ahh!" he gasped. "Wha' just?" He stuttered between breaths. "Some'in's," he muttered once he got a better grip on his wits. "Some'in's different."

"What?" Tarissa asked slowly as she crawled on the bed with the skills of a porn queen.

He stared at her, blankly. The spell was cast, he didn't have a choice, but she could tell that part of him still wanted to run. She didn't like that, she wanted all of him for herself. But for the time being, she recognized, she had enough.

"All those clothes must be uncomfortable," she said as she crawled onto him, making as much physical contact with him as possible as she tantalizingly undressed him. "Let me help," she whispered into his ear, before begging to nibble on it.

"Tenny, Miss Sherman," he said as he half heartedly tried to push her away. "I think . . ."

"What?" she asked innocently, pushing herself a way and leaving him cold. "Don't you want to?"

"Yes!" Doyle said, his eyes running up and down her perfect body, resting longer on some features than other.

"Then don't think," she said, pressing her lips, and subsequently the rest of her body, against his. Doyle promptly followed her advice.

***

Doyle stumbled into Angel's office around ten a.m. with an impish smile on his face.

"So," Cordelia snapped, not looking up from her magazine to acknowledge Doyle's presence. "Twelve hours later you show."

"Mornin'" Doyle said happily, not even noticing her foul mood. "You seen Angel?"

"I'd imagine he's sleeping," Cordelia said. "Apparently you didn't come in late enough."

"Bitter about tha' are ya?" he asked, ruefully.

"I would have to care in order to be bitter."

"Sorry 'bout the hour, I just had an amazin' night."

"What, the pub have a two for one sale?"

"Ya are bitter," Doyle said, his smile slipping just a little. "Wha's the matter?"

"If you have to ask you don't deserve to know."

"That would seem a tad unfair," Doyle said as he started to pour himself a cup of coffee.

"Yeah," Cordy said, slamming her magazine down on the desk. An act so loud, so sudden, so violent, that Doyle jerked around, spilling the hot coffee on his hand. He winced, frantically trying not to spill more of the scalding liquid on himself. If Cordelia noticed his reaction, she didn't care. "And personally I think it's unfair what you did to Angel last night! You told him you would go with him to that cemetery and he was counting on you! What if those kids had raised that demon and Angel needed your help!"

Doyle set the coffee pot down shakily. "He's alright, yeah?"

"No thanks to you." She grumbled, before attacking on an entirely different front. "And what about the No-Longer-in-hell party! It's not much of a party with two people!"

"Did I miss tha'?" Doyle asked, obviously upset. He dug in his pocket and pulled out a little tissue paper package. "I ga a gift."

"No," she sighed. "I guess we can do it when he comes up." She reached into the bottom drawer of her desk and pulled out the shirt box. "I mean it's not like we actually know which day it was."

"You're celebratin' this day, an you don't even know wha' the actual day is?"

"It's not like Angel'll remember. He was absolutely looney for about a month there," she shrugged. "Guess a couple hundred years in Hell'll do that for ya."

"Yeah, I guess so," Doyle responded, because he didn't know what else to say. One thing he did know was that her wrath had turned away from him, and the longer it stayed that way the better it was for his health.

"So where were you?" Cordy asked, as she picked up her magazine.

"Where was I when?"

"When you weren't here?"

"Oh," Doyle said. He glanced away and laughed softly, almost giggling. "The thing of it is I . . . ah . . . I meet someone?"

"Someone who kept you occupied all night?"

Doyle smiled, but didn't say anything.

Before Cordy could insult the smile off of his face, the elevator started rattling, Cordy quickly grabbed the two packages and hid them under her desk.

"Now when the door opens yell surprise and then start singing," she whispered loudly.

"Sing what?" Doyle asked quickly, the elevator was almost there. "Happy no-longer-in-hell day to you?"

"Surprise!" Cordy yelled as the elevator door slid open. Angel stood there, very surprised, and a little afraid. She glanced at Doyle pointedly, "Happy Birthday to you," she started singing in a commanding, not jovial manner.

Doyle quickly caught on and started in on the second line. Once the song was over both Cordy and Doyle were smiling at their favorite vampire. Angel had yet to exit the elevator. He had confronted a thousand deadly demons with less intrepidation than he looked on the surprise party.

"It's not my birthday," Angel said from the safety of the elevator.

"We know," Cordy said, as she pulled the presents out from under her desk. "But someone likes being all secretive and brooding."

"It's not even close to my birthday."

"The term birthday is misleading," Doyle said, "Happy get-outa-hell-free day would be more appropriate, but it's rather awkward to sing."

"Get out of hell?"

"Yeah," Cordy said happily, "About one year ago you came back from hell."

"Some'in worth celebrating." Doyle commented earnestly.

"I guess," he said, carefully walking into the room proper. "Cordelia, are you sure it was a year ago?"

"Oh, yeah," she said dismissively, "Doyle, there's a cake and some milk in the fridge."

"Right," the Irishman said, turning to get the party foods that the party's boy couldn't enjoy.

"You two really didn't have to . . ."

"Of course not," Cordelia said, pulling out party napkins and a knife for the cake as Doyle deftly carried a little bakery cake with three or the offices mugs and a carton of milk over to the desk. "Cake or presents first?"

"I don't eat cake," Angel said flatly.

"Milk?" Doyle asked as he struggled with the plastic binding. "Does a body good. Or so I've been told."

"I guess," he said, trying very hard to get into the party mood.

"Here you go," Doyle said, handing the cold mug to his friend.

"Ok, you have milk, now open your presents." Cordelia ordered as she looked up from her cake cutting.

Angel looked at the two presents awkwardly. It had been centuries since anyone had given him a present and he wasn't quite sure how to handle it.

"Which one?" he asked nervously.

"Open mine first," Cordy said, as she handed Doyle a peace of cake on a party napkin. "It's the big one."

Angel complied, being careful not to rip any of the fancy wrapping paper. Cordelia and Doyle looked at him anxiously, and he started to feel a little anxious himself. How did people react to gifts. The only real gift receiving he had seen for a long time was Buffy accepting the calgha ring. He remembered how good it felt to see that light behind her eyes grow as she put the ring on her finger and the way she glanced up at him with a smile on her face which hinted she understood how much he loved her.

He couldn't do that, he knew. He didn't have the light in his eyes that Buffy had, nor did he think the expression that passed as his smile could communicate how deeply the very fact that they wanted to celebrate the fact that he was not in hell touched him.

He opened the box fearfully, and was truly puzzled by what he saw. Nervously, he picked up the yellow object with one hand as he put the box down with the other. Angel was very afraid that Cordelia had, somehow, made a mistake and given him someone else's present. But one glance at the beaming smile on her face and that theory was debunked. Angel forced a smile and held up the shirt so hie could see it more clearly.

"Wow . . . Cordelia . . . this is certainly . . . um . . . bright."

"That's what I said," Doyle commented.

"I know, isn't it great!" Cordelia said. "You're wardrobe really needed some spicing up and I had to look everywhere for it but trust me, it's just the thing."

"Thank you Cordelia," Angel said earnestly. He thought the shirt was absolutely hideous, but she had thought about him, about things (she thought) he needed and then spent time and effort to find them. He didn't deserve that in the least, and they both knew it. "I love it."

Cordelia looked like she was on cloud nine. "Now open Doyle's," she said anxiously. "I want to see what he got you."

Angel took Doyle's palm sized package, wrapped in yesterday's newspaper, and carefully unwrapped it. Cordy leaned in to see what the Irishman had gotten the vampire.

As Angel unwrapped the delicate ornament his face transformed into a visage of wonder. He didn't dare touch it, for fear that one or both of them would burst into flames. He glanced up at Doyle, who was smiling at him with a wisdom that should not have been present in such a young man's eyes.

"What is it?" Cordelia asked. She had never seen anything like it, a little x made out of grass. It was delicate and small and, most likely, something Doyle had done on the bus ride to the office. So while Cordelia put a lot of effort, and thereby love, into her gift, Doyle had made something that was sentimental and symbolic for free. "It's a St. Bridget cross," Angel explained.

"A cross!" Cordy yelled, looking at Doyle accusingly. "You gave a vampire a cross?!"

"It's an old tradition in Ireland, St. Bridget made one of these crosses as he converted the natives to explain the crucifixion. It's a symbol of good fortune and keeps away misfortune." Angel glanced up at Doyle, the half demon was still smiling, before returning his gaze to the gift. "I taught my sister how to make these when she was seven. She would spend hours making these little crosses, and crowns of clover, during the summers. They would litter the yard and even the house." Angel laughed at the memory of a little girl so very far removed. "I remember one time she was trying to give one to everyone she saw, so she made one for the horse. He ate it and she was so upset. She prayed for a month that Jesus forgive the horse for such blaspheme because he was just an innocent beast." Angel laughed again before looking up at Doyle and, this time, staring him straight in the eyes. "Thank you."

***

Tarissa stood in front of some of Wolfram and Hart's most valuable and up and coming lawyers. She wasn't talking to Wolfram or Hart, but she had just started, she would move up in time, and for now it was an honor just to be talking to Attorneys McDonald, Merser, and ********

"Now, Miss Sherman, what did you want to talk about?"

Tarissa tried very hard to sound too proud of herself as she explained her accomplishment. "As I'm sure your aware I have successfully gained full control of Allen Frances Doyle, the seer who has been aiding the rogue vampire Angel. And to that end I have, through an incantation and brew, induced three visions of future or present events which could, possibly, be of interest to the firm. You'll find that each of you have a copy of my reports on them in front of you."

The three lawyers shuffled threw the paper that was in front of them. They didn't say anything, they didn't even make an expression, but they were impressed, Tarissa thought she would burst with pride.

McDonald, who Tarissa thought was a very attractive man, leaned forward. "How did you get close engough to him to get this information?"

"He's in love with me."

"Tenuous bond," ****, the creepy young man sitting in the middel, said.

"It won't break," She asserted. "He's enchanted."

"You cast a spell," *****, an attractive young woman said. "And you are sure you have full control of him?"

"Yes, he's part demon, which, as I'm sure you know, makes him more susceptible to the pulls of supernatural forces."

"It could also give him strength to break it," McDonald commented

"Add to this the psyche of a man who convinced himself no woman would want him once she knew what he was." She chuckled. "He's mine. I just want to know what you want me to do with him."

The three senior lawyers looked at each other, and then smiled at her.

"This could be good," ***** said, "This could be very good. We'll go over this information and consider the options. To date you've seem to have handled it well, so until we have a definite plan, please, continue in your present course."

"Yes, sirs, thank you, I will" Tarissa said. She was trembling with pride.

***

"There," Doyle said, taking a step back from the far wall so that Angel and Cordelia could take a look at where St. Bridget's cross had been placed. "That good?"

"Wonderful," Angel said wistfully. It was in a corner of his office that was often bathed in sunlight, and therefore avoided.

"It's not too close," Cordy asked. She still didn't quite get the entire thing. "Won't give you the willies in the middle of the day will it?"

"No," Angel said good naturedly, "It's perfect."

"It kinda adds a grassy feel to the office," Cordy commented. Both men turned to look at her as if she were crazy. "Which I, personally, feel a lot of offices lack."

Doyle started to make a comment, but before he could get a word out the clock on Angel's desk chimed noon. "Is that clock right man?" Doyle asked, glancing the timepiece.

"According to Geneva."

"I've gotta go."

"Go?" Cordy asked, slipping in front of the door, believing she was impassable.

"To lunch."

"We just had cake," she said, as Angel moved to stand beside her. He knew he was impassable.

"I promised someone I'd meet 'em." Doyle explained.

"Who?" Angel asked.

Doyle crossed his arms and leaned on Angel's desk defensively. "I don't see how that's any of your business."

"Not any of our business!" Cordy said, taking a step forward. Angel grabbed her shoulder and held her back.

"We were just wondering if it was the same person you were with last night."

Doyle chuckled nervously, "Last night?"

"You didn't show at the cemetery," Angel explained.

"So I got held up."

"By who?" Cordy demanded passionately, Angel had to put his hand on her shoulder to center her down.

"Who?" Doyle chuckled, "what makes you think there's a who?"

"It's just not like you," Angel tried to explain. "To not show up after a vision, and then come in late, to leave to meet someone for lunch."

"I've got a life all of a sudden and you're concerned."

"Yeah!" Cordy said.

"Just curious," Angel corrected, glaring at the girl.

"Well," Doyle sighed, "You're right, last night, on the subway, I met a girl."

"A girl!" Cordy said, taking a step toward Doyle. Angel had to grab both her shoulders to hold her back.

"You were with her last night?" Angel said, trying very hard to understand.

"I didn't plan to," Doyle said, he was trying very had not to smile unabashedly. "But, ah, she had other things in mind."

"Ok, oversharing," Cordy muttered angrily.

"You're going to meet her now?" Angel asked.

Doyle nodded.

"Can I come?" Angel asked, "I'd like to meet her."

Doyle appeared uneasy at Angels self-invite. "Don't get me wrong, man, I'd love to have you come and meet her, but, ah, the thing of it is, this is a lunch date and I thought we might go to one of those pretty little outdoor cafés."

"That sounds nice," Angel commented dryly.

"But I know she'd love to meet you, and you'd both love her."

"I doubt that," Cordelia said walking away from the conversation disgusted.

"You should drop buy sometime," Doyle said, glancing at Cordelia, then back at Angel. "I really do want you guys to meet her."

"So why don't you bring her round here?" Angel asked.

Cordy, on the other hand, found the heart of the issue. "You're staying at her apartment!"

"Just for a while," Doyle said. "We wanna get our own place, you know, a house with a yard and grass and all that."

"A dog, a cat and three point five kids?" Cordy said angrily.

"'s the general idea, yeah."

"Are you sure you could have all that?" Angel asked. "You've got a higher purpose. Their's a battle going on and you have to be in the fields."

"How many times do I have to explain this?" Doyle asked, not at all frustrated because they were talking about Tenny and she was his favorite subject. "I'm a messenger, not a warrior. And I told her all about my visions and . . . everything and she didn't freak. She totally understood, an' she's real supportive too!"

"She sounds perfect," Cordelia commented angrily.

"She's a dream," Doyle said wistfully. He hadn't noticed Cordelia's tone or the icy glare she was shooting at him. "And she's waitin'," Doyle said, drawing himself back to reality.

"Go," Angel said softly. "But I do want to continue this conversation later."

"Right man," Doyle said dismissively. "See you later." He smiled at Angel and threw a smile in Cordelia's brewing direction before walking out the door.

The office was shrouded in silence for a minute as Doyle's two friends contemplated his behavior. Finally Cordelia's anger shattered it.

"I don't like it." she said curtly.

"He seems happy," Angel said, waiting for someone to tell him that happiness was not an end.

"Still, when did he meet her, last night? And their talking marriage?"

Angel shrugged, "It could be love at first sight."

"Love?! HIM!"

"It's not that unreasonable that someone would be in love with him." Angel said, a little bewildered by Cordelia's actions. She seemed to be jealous, but she wasn't in love with Doyle, she didn't even have a crush on him, that she would admit. She had nothing to be jealous of. "I think we should be happy for him."

Cordy sighed in disgust.

"No," Angel continued, "Listen, He's found someone he loves and who loves him back. Its simple and it's beautiful."

"Oh, like the eternal love You and Buffy shared? May I remind you how that ended."

Angel looked at Cordelia for a second, before glancing away and hitting the desk with a frighteningly controlled force. "It doesn't have to be that way."

"Yeah, Angel, it does," Cordelia said, hard and cold as stone. "You may have lived for two hundred years, and you may have had the tragic romance of all time, but you're not the only one who's been blinded by love. And when the only thing you see is the person you're in love with, it always ends badly."

Angel wanted to offer some words of hope for Doyle's sake, say maybe, this time, it would be a happy ending with rainbows and flowers and a house with a picket fence and rosy cheeked babies. But those were pipe dreams for people who knew just how real the monster under the bed was. So Angel said nothing.

***

"Hey," Doyle said before he leaned over the table and kissed Tarissa sweetly and innocently on the lips. "Sorry I'm late, Angel gave me the third degree."

"Didn't burn you I hope," she said smiling at him.

"Not'in a little ice can't fix," Doyle chuckled, "An' Cordy had plenty a tha'."

"Your friends sound less than friendly," she said slyly.

"Ah, na, they're great, you'll love 'um."

She looked at him skeptically.

"No really, I want you guys to get together."

"A vampire and an unemployed actress," Tarissa said, wrinkling her nose in an adorable way. "Not my types, not yours either, I'd think."

"Wa'da ya mean?"

She looked around as if the obvious answer was everywhere. "You are not part of that under-life that they live. You're more of a person than that."

"Tenny, I think your forgetting a few choice facts . . ."

"What?" She asked, leaning backwards so the waiter could set down the salad she had ordered for both of them before he came. "Don't tell me your gonna bring the demon with visions thing up again."

"It may be a 'thing' to you, Sunshine, but they seem rather important to me."

"And they are important," she assured him. "They're part of who you are, but, they're not who you are."

Doyle's face betrayed that he didn't have a clue as to what she was talking about.

"You see Allen," Tarssia explained. "You are half demon, but you're half human too. You may have visions, but you also had a third grade class once. You may be living in LA, but you were born in a quaint Irish shire between emerald hills and sapphire seas."

"Tha's very pretty." Doyle said, thinking her eyes were very pretty too, "Bu' I don't see the point."

"The point is," she said giggling. "That the position you are in now is not the position you will be in tomorrow or yesterday. Just because something is, doesn't mean it has to be."

"You're a poet."

"And you're a prophet," she said. "I'd say we suit each other."

Doyle laughed as he turned to his, so-far, neglected salad. After moving the tomatoes and olives around on his plate with his fork he looked up. "Did I ever tell you I loved you?"

"Let's see, there was last night, at least three times, and there had to be ten this morning . . ."

"How 'bout recently?"

"Not to my knowledge."

"I love you," he said with an earnest sweetness that would have melted the heart of any woman other than Tarissa. "An' if I were a poet, with words half as pretty as yours, I'd use 'em. But as it stands, all I have is, 'I love you.' So you're gonna have to take my word on that."

Oh yes, she had him, now all she had to do was use him.

After lunch drinks were ordered, and, par her request, the waiter slipped a small packet of white powder (made mostly of the dried eyes of an owl and Pepto-bismal tablets) into his drink. Doyle took a sip and winced.

"Are you alright?" Tenny asked, knowing the answer.

"Sure," Doyle said, his hand was starting to shake as the darkness behind his eyes started to throb. He set down the glass and grabbed the edge of the table as his mind suffered blow after blow and image after image. Tarissa watched.

When Doyle gasped for breath and opened his eyes, it was done. Tarissa had had the waiter take away the enchanted margarita and replace it with a double shot of whisky, for which Doyle was eternally grateful.

"What did you see?" She demanded, before the young seer had a chance to take a swig of the soothing alcohol.

He set the glass down shakily, that vision had hurt more than any vision he had ever seen. "I saw t'ree guys." He finally managed to choke out, his voice raw from the vision or the whisky or both. "Bikers," he blinked a few times as the pain ebbed enough for his cranial passage to work again.

"Three bikers?" Tarissa asked, what kind of vision was that?

"Yeah," Doyle glanced at the empty glass of whisky, desperately needing more. "Nasty fellas too."

"Nasty how?"

"Well," Doyle said, looking into the distance so he could concentrate on what he had seen. "They were big guys, on big bikes, Harleys or something. Black leather and no concept of personal hygiene, they smelled pretty bad."

"You could smell them?" Tarissa asked, fascinated. "That's amazing."

"Not as great as it sounds, trust me," Doyle chuckled, it made his head hurt so he stopped.

"What did they look like?"

Doyle was so used to being grilled by Angel or Cordelia after a vision that he didn't think twice about why Tenny would care. "One was a huge man, probably about six-ten an' two hundred an' forty pounds. He had long, dark, filthy hair pulled back in a ponytail. There was another guy, Kalif Demon with scars all over his head," he glanced up at her, "He must not wear a helmet."

"And the third."

"Big, muscular guy, wi' tatoos all over."

"Any names?"

"Not this time."

"Hummm," she sounded disappointed.

"Why are you so interested anyway?" Doyle asked, not accusatorialy, just curiously.

"It's who you are," Tarissa said dismissively as she put some money on the table. "And I care."

To anyone else that would have been less than convincing, but Doyle bought it hook, line, and sinker. "I could pay," Doyle offered, standing and reaching for his sadly thin wallet.

She laughed at him, patting him on the cheek she said. "No, I don't think you could."

Before Doyle got too much of a chance to feel horrible about his inability to treat his sweetheart, Tarissa kissed him long and passionately on the lips before chirping a quick, "See you later," and running off to catch a taxi, leaving Doyle breathless, smitten, but most of all bewildered.

Once inside the cab, Tarissa pulled out a talisman she had made from the hide of a dove soaked in the animals blood, before being stained with Doyle's. She rubbed the talisman between her two hands and incurred the goddess on her behalf, as she had after the past three enchantment-induced visions. "Oh that my spell may truly bind/I pray his memory will unwind/so that the vision, which he did see/will belong to only me."

***

"How d'I look?" Doyle asked Cordelia nervously as he nervously fiddled with his coat collar.

"Like a street rat wrapped in tinfoil," she said, because the fact was he looked great. She knew it was because she couldn't have him, not because Doyle had any intrinsic worth as a mate, but she didn't want this woman, whom she had never even seen, to have him.

"T'anks Cordelia," Doyle said sarcastically.

"I've got a compact if you need it," Cordy said, sensing she might have over done it a tad. "It's not very big, but hey, a mirror, novel idea in vamp land."

Doyle saw her apology and accepted it graciously, "Yeah, sure," he said, taking the little compact from her and holding it so far away from himself, in order to get a proper view, that he had to squint.

"So, where are you going tonight?" Cordy asked casually, as if she couldn't have cared less.

"I da'know," he said as he closed the compact and gave it back to Cordy. "You think she'd like to go dancing?"

"Dancing's fun."

"On the other hand," Doyle said, "I'm not much of a dancer, I'm not sure the impression I want to leave her with is a bumbling klutz, accurate though it might be."

"So tell me about her," Cordelia said, her detached cool finally warn thin.

"She's the most amazin person . . ."

"Not that crap," Cor said harshly. "I don't want to hear you blubber about warm fuzzies."

"Well than what do you want to hear."

"Her name would be a good place to start."

"I thoug' I told ya, Tenny, Tenny Sherman."

"And what's her job?"

"She's a paralegal a' a local law firm."

"Which one?"

"I da'know," Doyle shrugged.

"You should find out," Cor said passionately. "She could be evil, working for Wolfram and Hart."

Doyle shook his head, which sparked a sharp pain in his brain, so he stopped. "I really don't think . . ."

"I'll check it out for you," Cordy said over eagerly.

"You do tha'," Doyle said, because his mood was to bright to spat with Cordelia.

"Right, last name Sherman?"

"Yeah."

"And what does she look like?" Cor asked as if it was the next logical question. "And APB info only, I don't want an of that 'lips like roses, skin like ivory' junk that you love looneys like so much."

"Why do you wanna know tha'?" Doyle asked suspecting something.

"Oh," she said looking up at him innocently as she played with her pen. "Just . . . curious." Her eyes glanced to everything in the room that wasn't Doyle, acting innocent and not pulling it off.

Doyle smiled and closed his eyes so he could see her better. "She's, um, about five t'ree, with really Great legs an' more curves than a pigs tail. She's ga' jet bla'k hair an' a fair complexion. Doesn' tan like you. 'Er hair is wavy an' a little shorter 'an yours. 'Er eyes are, ah, a chocolate color soft and smooth. Come ta think of if, all part's a her are soft and smooth . . ."

"OK!" Cordelia yelled, her self esteem lower than it had been since she had started working for Angel. "Over sharing!"

"Wha'?" Doyle asked, opening his eyes.

"I got the idea," she said, pushing herself away from the desk and heading to the door.

"Where you goin'?" Doyle asked.

"To get a latte," She quipped.

"You need company?"

"I don't know why I would."

Doyle nodded., "yeah, well."

"Yeah," Cor said, right before she shut the door.

Doyle looked around the empty outer office and, finding it sadly empty, went into Angel's office.

"Hey," he said casually as he leaned against the doorway.

"Hey," Angel said, as he glanced up. "You look nice."

"T'anks, 'm taken' Tenny out after work." Doyle said, taking the complement as an invitation. He walked into the room and slouched in the chair across form Angel. "Wha's with Cordelia?"

"What do you mean?"

"She seems a little," he wobbled his head, trying to think of a word. "Off."

Angel knew exactly what the seer was referring to, but he felt that he would be, somehow, betraying Cordelia to say that she was jealous, that she had loved being the apple of Doyle's eye. He couldn't see any possible positive result of exposing feelings that neither of his friends were willing to face. "Truth be told, you seem a little off. I think he might be responding to that."

"Wha' are you talking about man?"

"Ever since you've met this woman . . ."

"Tenny?"

"You've been distracted."

Doyle laughed, "It's been a day, not even."

"We can tell."

"Oh," Doyle huffed, "I see, smile on my face an a frown on everybody else's. Nice deal."

"That's not . . ."

"Really? Cause that's how it seems. I wake up with a beautiful woman and suspicious friends."

"You're overreacting."

"Am I? How? Cordy acts distant and uppity, and you blame me for it."

"Who's being suspicious now?"

"I don't have to listen to this," Doyle said, pushing himself out of the chair.

"Listen to something."

"Start saying somethin' an' I'll consider it."

"I've been . . ."

"All I've heard are accusations against a girl you've never met."

"I didn't accuse her . . ."

"It feels like your are."

"My point exactly, you're feeling not thinking."

"Wha's so wrong wi' that? I'm happy."

"That's not an end."

"Maybe for you," Doyle said softly. "But for me it seems like a pretty sweet goal. Is it too much to ask that you trust me wi'h my life."

Angel didn't answer, but he did hold Doyle with a guiltless glare.

"'S wha' I though'," Doyle said, adjusting his jaw before walking out of the office. A second later Angel heard the door slam.

***

"What's bothering you?" Tarissa asked Doyle softly in his ear.

"Wha'?"

"You're not your usual chipper self."

"Angel 'n Cordelia . . ." Doyle started, his gaze drifting away from Tarissa.

She grabbed his chin and turned his head so she couldn't look at anyone but her, "Aren't important. What is important is us."

Before he could respond she pressed his lips against hers and kept them their so long that the waiter passed them twice. Finally, she pushed herself away, looking at him, every bit the witch she was.

"What was I talkin' about?" Doyle asked.

"Us."

"Right," Doyle said, smiling. "My favorite subject."

"Why doesn't that surprise me."

"Have you ever had a wedding?" he asked somewhat out of the blue.

"No, I vowed to myself that I would never marry."

Doyle laughed, "Sworn bachelorette, eh?"

"In my experience," she said, taking a swig of wine, "All men are bastards"

"Really?" Doyle said, feeling a tad uncertain.

"Really," she said with a dead seriousness, before she burst out laughing. "Kiss me again," she said, when her hysterics past.

But Doyle didn't hear her. "Angel!" Doyle practically yelled as he stood up rapidly and spilled some wine on the white table cloth. "Cordelia," he laughed nervously as his friends walked over. "I wasn' expectin' you here. Somethin' the matter?"

"You," Cordelia said sharply.

"Wha'?"

"We came here to celebrate," Angel said, covering his secretary's tracks.

"Celebrate?" Doyle asked confused.

"Celebrate?" Cordy echoed.

"What's the occasion?" Tenny asked innocently.

"I'm not in hell."

"What?" she asked again, very confused.

Cordelia opened her mouth to start explaining, but Doyle didn't give her the chance. "It's a long story," he told his girlfriend softly.

"This must be Tenny," Angel said, sidestepping Doyle so he could talk to the beautiful woman directly. He reached out his hand, "It's a pleasure to meet you Miss Sherman, Doyle's told me a lot about you."

"Likewise," she said, taking his hand and shaking it in a very ladylike fasion. Angel smiled, partially because no one had shaken his had that way for about fifty years, but mostly because he highly doubted that Doyle had told her 'so much' about him. He was wrong.

"So," Doyle said, his voice tight, "ya just happened to come ta dis bar ta celebrate."

Cordelia looked around as she adjusted her shawl to fit more closely around her perfectly sculpted shoulders. "Yep," she clipped.

"Shall I set two more places?" the waiter, who was well passed annoyed with this particular table.

Angel and Cor glanced at Doyle, who in turn looked at Tarissa for guidance. She hated Angel and Cordelia was so far beneath her that she wasn't worth considering. But they had a claim on him, and in order for her to own Doyle, wholly and completely, she would have to usurp them. She couldn't do that unless she knew them, "yes," she said to the matradee as she scooted over so Angel and Cordelia could scoot into the curved booth. The seating arrangement ended up being Cordelia, to the left of Angel, to the left of Tarissa, to the left of Doyle, so that Doyle and Cor were facing each other.

The conversation throughout dinner centered mainly around Doyle, which turned out to be a rather stunted topic. The young Demon didn't want to say a word about himself, and Tarissa respected that enough to not to let her vast information slip. So the conversation largely centered around his few months with Angel and Cordelia. And while Angel tended to lean towards stories where Doyle did something mildly impressive or slightly brave, Cordelia had a tendency to mention the long nights in the pub with his friend Jack.

Dessert was served at the same time the band arrived, and when the Terimisue was gone, the music started.

Doyle, desperate to get away from the present conversation took Tarissa's hands. "Care ta dance?" He asked.

"I thought you said you couldn't dance?" Cordelia asked him accusitively. She was ignored.

"I'd love to," Tarissa said, sliding out of the both and walking onto the dance floor.

He wasn't graceful, but she was, and even Cordy couldn't pretend they didn't look good together.

"She's evil," Cordy said, her voice hard with conviction.

"What?" Angel asked

"Can't you tell?" Cor said, motioning to the dance floor. "Just look at them."

"She seems nice," Angel said, more in Doyle's defence than in Tenny's.

"Come on," Cor insisted. "We ate dinner with her and we still don't know anything about her."

"So she's not social," Angel said. "That's not a crime."

"She's more than anti-social," Cor accused. "She's secritive. I bet Doyle dosn't really know anything about her."

"What is there to know?" Angel asked, "Relationships are all about feelings."

Cordelia glared at the dancing couple, "And I have a feeling that she has him, hook, line, and sinker."

"That goes without saying," Angel muttered, scooting across the both until he was out. "The question is, does he have her?"

"What?"

"Will you accompany me to the dance floor?"

"I don't want to dance with you," Cordy said flatly.

"You won't be dancing with me you'll be dancing with Doyle."

"I don't want to dance with him either," she said with a little more force. "But he's over there with Tenny, he's not gonna like anyone cutting in."

"Come on," Angel urged, holding out his hand, "He's a gentleman, he won't make a fuss."

"Doyle? A gentleman?" Cor asked, as she put her hand in Angels and allowed him to help her up and lead her to the dance floor.

He left Cordelia at the edge of the floor before walking up to Doyle and taped him lightly on the shoulder.

"Yeah?" Doyle asked, confused.

"I'd like to cut in," Angel said nervously.

"Why?" Tarissa asked suspiciously.

"Cordelia wants a partner that's not . . . me. And I'd like to talk to you," Angel said earnestly.

"You can do that on the phone," Doyle said.

"Allen," Tarissa scolded. "Don't be rude."

"Allen?" Angel asked, just a tad confused.

The beautiful woman kissed her seer on the cheek before detaching herself from his arms. "Go dance with Cordelia, Angel and I'll have a nice talk."

Doyle nodded, "Right," he said softly. He was disappointed that he wasn't able to hold his Tenny in his arms for a little longer, but he trusted her too much to be worried.

"So," Angel asked, as Tenny pushed her body a little too close to his. "How did you two meet?"

"On the subway, he had a vision then I helped him."

"Helped him?"

"Took him to my apartment, to recover." She tilted her head, "I think he called you from there."

"Yeah," Angel laughed nervously, "I guess he did."

The danced in silence for a couple of standards before Angel found the nerve to ask her, "Do you love him?"

"What?"

"I need to know, do you love him?"

"Isn't it obvious?"

"I don't trust the obvious."

"Wise," she said casually, "It must come with two-hundred years of life."

Angel laughed nervously, "What?"

"You're a vampire and you've been alive for over two hundred years. As an added bonus, you've had a soul for the last hundred or so. That's the kinda thing that's bound to make a man wise."

"Thanks," he said uncertainly. "Seeing as you seem to know everything about me, why don't you tell me something about you?"

"What do you want to know?"

"What do you do?"

She laughed, "Are you seeing if I'm good enough?"

"Is there a reason for me to think you're not?"

"I'm a paralegal at a local law firm, before you ask you haven't heard of it. I, like you and Allen, am not natively American. I was born in Romania . . ."

"Lovely country,"

"Came here when I was eight, culture shock, let me tell you."

"So do you and Doyle have anything else in common?"

"We're both in love," she said.

At the edge of the dance floor, Cordelia watched as Doyle approached her. He kept looking over his shoulder at Angel and Tenny dancing.

"Hey Doyle," Cordy said despondently.

"Angel said you needed someone ta dance with," Doyle responded, with little more emotion.

Cordelia made an expression that Doyle couldn't quite read. "I guess."

"Well then," Doyle said, holding out his hand and trying to put some vigor into his voice.

"Ok," Cordelia huffed putting her hand in his and letting him draw her out to the floor.

They danced almost a song wordlessly, and that was bad. Their relationship was usually composed of banter and no physical contact, the closeness of dancing and the absolute silence bothered them both.

"So," Cordy finally prompted.

"So."

"You're a better dancer than you let on."

"Is that a compliment?"

"That woman must be a witch or something to make you graceful," she joshed.

"Ya like her?" Doyle asked excitedly.

"She seems nice," Cordy said with much pain.

"I knew you'd love 'er."

"But," Cordelia continued, "There's just something, not quite right about her."

Doyle distanced himself from his partner just a little, "What are you talking about?"

"I mean," Cordelia tried to explain. "She's not real, in some way."

"Trust me she's very real."

"No," Cordy insisted, her woman's intuition and sense of spite not letting her stay silent. "She's shallow."

"And your one to talk?"

"I don't lie about who I am, what you see is what you get."

"Are you accusin' Tenny a lyin'?"

"She's not honest," Cordy scoffed.

Doyle turned cold and Cordy felt his mussels tense, "I don't suppos ya 'ave any proof."

"I'll beg you to remember I am an actress!"

"Student of the human condition?"

Cordelia glared at him, "She doesn't feel honest."

"Feel's fine to me," Doyle said, confrontationally.

Cordelia was angered by his tone, and it showed in her voice. "You know what, I take it back. She may seem nice but I have to think she's horrible."

"Cordelia!" Doyle said, pushing her away harshly.

"See!" Cor said, raising her voice. "This isn't you Doyle. This bitch did something to you . . ."

"Bitch," Doyle said in a harsh angry whisper. "That's the pot callin' the kettel black."

"At least I don't pretend," she whispered, equally harsh.

"No," Doyle said, shaking his head, "You make no pretensions."

"What are you implying?"

"You're a whore Cordelia, and you're proud it," he said. There was a cruelty in his eyes and in his voice that Cordy had never seen before, never even imagined him possible of. She was too shocked to say a word. "You're perfectly willing to sell yourself to the highest bidder, the man with the biggest bank account, the most stuff, tha's all you see. And when you hear the best offer for your wonderful heart mind soul, and, oh, body, you'll sell it all, ferever. At least the hookers on the street only give it away for a night."

Cordelia felt hollow, and full of rage at the same time. She was too furious to think, so she acted on instinct. She slapped him with enough force to send echos throughout the dance hall.

"Angel's not in hell anymore," she whispered harshly, tears rimming her eyes. "So there's plenty of room there for you."

Before Doyle could respond Cordelia turned around and stormed out of the dancing hall, her hand stinging, hot tears streaming down her face.

***

Almost a week passed and every day it became more and more clear that Doyle had no intention of ever coming back to the office. Cordelia's smiles became more and more forced. And Angel's fears became more and more actualized. The family of three he treasured so much seemed to be unraveling, and he had no way to bring it back together.

Doyle didn't mean to abandon the two people he loved, he just had other things on his mind. He was busy with things he had to do for Tenny, the least of which was have visions. He had an average of fifteen a day, and remembered none of them. Tarissa's incantations worked well, but she was starting to realize that, while he might be seeing things that were in the future, the more often he saw them the less important they became. Something truly important only happened one day every couple of weeks, no wonder his visions were so rare. Another reason the Powers That Be chose to make Doyle's visions few and far between was his half human body was not able to stand the force and the pain of so many visions a day. He took almost an overdose of the strongest painkillers he could find every day just to try to get rid of the headaches that never seemed to truly fade. His coordination suffered, as did his eyesight, and his thought process dulled. Allen was a shadow of Doyle, and Tarissa had very little use for shadows.

***

"Ahhh!" Doyle yelled. He fell to his knees, clutching his head and watching.

Tarissa and he had finished the gourmet dinner he had prepared for her and were sipping wine when it came. When he opened his eyes Tarissa was trying to clean the red wine out of the carpet.

Doyle's vision was blurred and the handful of aspirin he had taken not so long ago were entirely useless. He leaned over and laid his head on the cool glass of the windows. His eyes were closed and the only sound was Tarissa's footsteps on the soft carpet and the pain ebbed just enough for him to relax his face and drop the grimace of pain.

His quite repose was cut short by Tarissa's demand, "What did you see?"

Doyle groaned, he loved her, blindly, foolishly, with abandon, but not without insight. "No . . . nothin'"

"Don't lie to me Allen."

"Lien', who's lien'?" He asked as he staggered to his feet, his mirth worn thin.

"What did you see?" She demanded.

"I gotta go," He said, staggering towards the door.

"Hell no," she said, standing in front of him. "No secrets, remember?"

"Hell," Doyle said, his eyes slowly clearing, "Yeah."

"You can't do that to me Allen!" She yelled, setting off fire works in his head.

"I'm doin' it for you."

"Then I have a right to know . . ."

"No," Doyle said softly. "This is the way it has to be."

"Allen, I'm not letting you leave."

"Don't make me force my way out."

"Would you hit me?" she demanded incredulously.

"Tenny, please trust me."

"Allen, I can't trust you when you act like this."

"I'm trying to protect ya."

"And I want you to do that, but you have to be honest with me and tell me what you saw."

Doyle glanced away, she grabbed his head and forced him to look at her, setting his brain on fire in the process. He couldn't say no.

"You're dead," he said softly. She let go of his head. "Angel kills you."

"So you'd abandon me," she said, truly afraid. She wasn't sure if this was an induced vision or a real one, but it was frightening.

"No," Doyle said quickly, reaching out for her. "I was going to talk to him . . ."

"Talk! Talk!" She said, panicked. "How could you talk!? You have to kill him!"

"K-Kill 'im?" Doyle stuttered. "Isn't that a little extreme?"

"He's gonna kill me," She said, managing to get her voice to tremble and tears streaming down her face. "Oh, Allen please, I'm not going to feel safe until he's dead." She leaned on his chest and sobbed, there was nothing for him to do but comfort her.

"No, I'm sure we can work this out."

"He's a vampire . . ."

"With a soul."

"And one night in Vegas away from a demon that would kill you for fun."

"He's my friend," Doyle said sadly.

"He was feeling me up while we danced," she lied.

"Whhhhh . . . .wha'?" he stuttered.

"Thousands of men with souls try to steal their friend's women."

"Angel, he wouldn't. He couldn't!"

"He touched me Allen," she insisted. "I didn't mention it because I didn't want to hurt you."

"But he . . ." The poor half man was in shock.

"He did," she said. "And you just saw him kill me. Allen, there's only one thing to do."

"Tenny," he said uncertainly.

"Do you think he won't kill you too?"

"I's no' abou' tha'?"

"Life and death? Everything's about that."

She suddenly pushed herself away from him, leaving him cold, alone, and frightened of the choice he saw before him. He couldn't think clearly, all logical, ethical, and rational thoughts where ricocheting off of strong emotions. His head hurt and his heart hurt, he wanted to run and hide away from the world in a dark room with a bottle of scotch. He couldn't handle this, he wasn't strong enough. What were The Powers That Be thinking, placing him in a situation like this? Was it a test? Because he knew he would fail, and if he passed it was by a series of lucky guesses, which The Powers That Be tended to look down upon. Or it might be punishment for not being what the wanted him to be, not human enough, or not demon enough, or just plain not good enough. Doyle's knees felt weak and he couldn't move for fear of falling.

Tarissa had left him to run to the bathroom, someplace private where she could cast her spells.

The vision frightened her, she didn't want to die, but it also gave her a great opportunity to get rid of Angel or Doyle, or if she was really lucky, both.

She lit a bees wax candle and turned off the light. She pulled a solid wooden stake from out of the cupboard as well as the dove-skin talisman and a small jar of demon's blood and another case of powdered thistles. She poured the powder over the talisman before dipping the stake's tip in the blood and then rolling the hide over it. She rubbed the thistle powder into the wood, binding it with the talisman as she chanted softly.

"Diana, Goddess of the hunt and heart/ Destroy my enemy make him fall/ and he who's mine hear my call/ to do my will and made to play his part."

The flame on the candle flared as she rolled the stake out of the dove-hide, scattering the thistle powder everywhere, on the floor, in the air, on the candle and on Tarissa herself.

"Fire, flame bright and hot," she murmured as she set the stake aside as she spread the talisman smoothly on the flat counter. "Make my lover what he is not." She turned the candle upside down and smothered the flame, leaving a ring of wax and a black smudge mark on the hide.

Tarissa grabbed the stake and walked back into the well lit room where Doyle was struggling with morality and prophesy. He looked up at her as she approched him, his eyes were begging for instructions. He was her puppet.

She pressed the stake into his hand and looked directly in his soft, gray, bloodshot and confused, eyes. "Kill him," she said veminitly "for me."

Doyle nodded numbly, "Yeah,"

"It's the only way."

"I see tha'" he said, gripping the stake firmly.

"I knew you would."

***

Cordelia pushed herself away from the desk, went to open the door, but paused at the door frame, leaning against it, fighting the temptation to yawn. "I'm going home," she said at last.

Angel glanced at her, then glanced at the clock, it was ten, she could have gone home four hours ago. "Why did you stay so late?"

She shrugged. He didn't push. They both knew that, if Doyle had been around, the two of them would have gone to the local pub for dinner around six and Doyle might have shown up around eleven, after seeing her safely home, or he might have shown up the next morning with a hang-over.

"You know," he said, as she turned to leave. "You should go out more."

She turned around and looked at him with an sharp glare, "What?"

"Doyle found a life and found happiness," Angel said cautiously, knowing that the half-demon was a sore spot for the girl. "And as a result you've stopped looking."

"Jezze," Cor scoffed. "I stay a couple hours late and all of a sudden I'm an old maid?"

"Cordelia, I didn't mean . . ."

"What did you mean?!" she asked upset. "That you want me to go out into the middle of that big bad city and go around getting cozy with any hot guy I meet on the subway until I find the perfect fit?"

"Cordelia,"

"You, of all people, should know that it's a dangerous city out there, full of dangerous people,"

"I know, but . . ."

"And the last thing you should do to an of those people is trust them. Not even considering the demon and the hellspawn that are roaming the streets, there are jerks and losers and users and abusers and creeps and just because some great looking person hits on you on the subway doesn't mean you should drop the life you had and the people you claimed to love. It's just not right!"

"Cordelia," Angel said softly, once she had said her piece.

"What?" she snapped.

"I don't think you were talking to me."

"Sorry," she said meekly. "I think I should go home."

"Do you want me to drive you?"

"No," Cor sighed, rolling off the door frame and into the outer office. "Maybe I'll find true love on the ride home."

Angel almost laughed.

She tallied just a moment, straightening her desk and making sure she had everything she needed in her bag. As she was doing that, the door to the outside flew open with a bang, which was odd because Cordy knew she had locked it. She looked up knowing it could only be one of two things, someone big and strong and evil, or someone with a key. It was the latter.

"Doyle!" she said with excitement before she remembered she hated him. "Look Angel," she said loudly as the young man walked silently and with a marked look of determination across the room. "Doyle's back."

Angel quickly move to stand in front of his desk, and seeing that Doyle froze in the doorway, emanating the Irish temper he kept well hidden.

"Doyle," Angel said cautiously, eyeing the stake he had in his hand. "It's good to see you. What are you doing here?"

"I know what your planin', you bastard," Doyle said, almost as if he had been rehearsing it on his way to the office.

"Doyle," Angel said, straightening to his full height, a good head taller than the half demon. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Don't lie ta me!" Doyle said, raising the stake. "I saw it! Ya threw her infron' a a subway car. Why?! Wha' she ever do ta you?"

Cordelia took a step closer, "You're crazy," she observed. "That witch,"

"Don't call 'er tha'." Doyle warned.

"Is totally messing with your head!"

Doyle ignored her and turned his attention back to Angel. "I love 'er, and I'll kill ya before I let you touch 'er."

"I'm not going to hurt Tenny," Angel said, very slowly and with a forced calm.

"Ámahntacaihn!" Doyle muttered before he lunged at the vampire with the enchanted steak. Cordelia saw what was about to happen, so she ran up to help Angel, but the half demon saw her approach and backhanded her before she could become a threat to him or an aid to his enemy. She went flying backwards and hit her head on the corner of her desk.

That, on Doyle's part, was a very bad idea. Angel would defend himself, but deep down the vampire believed he deserved to die, and the last thing he ever wanted to do was hurt his friends, so Doyle had a prayer of a chance against the seasoned, super strong, fighter. But by hurting Cordelia Doyle had crossed a line, he was no longer a sad figure, desperate and confused. He was, if not evil at heart, evil in action, and that's all Angel needed.

His vampiric face emerged as he grabbed Doyle's right wrist in an iron grip the young man could not break. He twisted it backwards until Doyle let go of the stake and was pined to the ground. He hadn't needed to show his demonic side, but as he looked down at his friend helpless on the ground through his demonic yellow eyes he saw Doyle was truly afraid. It was the first time Doyle had looked at him that way, and oddly, it made Angel feel worse instead of better. He changed back.

When the young Irishman had dropped the stake and the particular enchantment that had propelled him to attack in blind anger was broken. The only sound in the room was the echos of Doyle's rough berthing.

"Angel," Doyle finally croaked, His eyes were still frightened, but he wasn't frightened by Angel, he was frightened by himself.

"We need to talk," Angel said.

Doyle moved to get up, and Angel didn't stop him.

"No," Doyle said softly, not even looking at his friend, who had already forgiven him. "No' yet."

"When?" Angel demanded. "Cordelia is right, something is happening to you."

"Oh my god," Doyle whispered, turning so he could see out the door, where Cordelia was trying to push herself into a sitting position. There was a small puddle of blood where her head had been. "Cordelia."

Angel forgot Doyle for a moment and sped to Cordy, gently taking her forearms and helping her into a sitting position. He sensed more than saw, Doyle walk up behind him and look at what he had done.

Cordy groaned softly and awkwardly tried to stop the blood spurting out of her head.

"Cor . . ." he couldn't even say her whole name. Angel glanced up at him and saw that the half demon was slowly backing out of the door. "I'm so, so sorry."

"Don't go back to her," Angel warned. "Not yet. Not until we know what's happening."

"Back," Doyle chuckled morbidly, as he shook his head, making his eyes water with pain. "No, never."

"Doyle," Angel said, his voice was a warning not of anything in particular, just of a direction the young man would be sorely tempted to go.

Doyle looked at Angel, then at Cordelia and then back at Angel. Then he turned around and ran.

Angel was tempted to jump up, and run afer his friend, but he knew he couldn't for two reasons. One, blood was still flowing out of Cordelia's forehead at an alarming rate but more importantly, this was Doyle's life and his decision. Angel was in the business of saving souls and he knew that a person was never saved by force. They had to walk into it on their own strength and by their own will. Angel believed that Doyle had the strength and the conviction but he wasn't sure about the will.

***

Angel leanded over Cordelia, delicatly puting a bandage on her head. There was blood everywhere, and it was making him hungry, but he pushed those thoughts aside and consintrated on helping Cordelia so they could help Doyle.

"He was totaly wacked," Cordy said, wincing slightly as Angel patted the bandage gently to her head. "I mean, I've seen him drunk but you know, he's usualy a cute, affectionet drunk, not a homosidel kill your freinds drunk."

"That wasn't Doyle, somethings happened to him."

"And what was that thing he called you? A man to chew on?"

"Ámahntacaihn," Angel said. "It's Irish Galic."

"What does it mean?"

"Litteraly, summer teath."

"What?" Cordy said, jerking her head to look at him and instently regreting it.

"It dosn't translate well," He stuttered.

The tea kettel wisteled and Angel moved away from Cordelia for a moment so he could pore them some tea.

"What do you think he'll do?" Cordy asked, her voice laced with worrie as he handed her the tea.

"I don't know," Angel said. "It's his choice."

"What?!"

"This is something he has to work through himself,"

"You're kidding right? You plan to go hunt her down and make her give him up."

"Cordelia, I can't, their in love."

"He's bewitched!" Cordelia insisted. "Can't you see it?"

"Don't you think you're jumping to conclusions," Angel asked, a tad annoyed at Cordelia for voicing the thing he hadn't wanted to think all night.

"Do you remember that time when Xander cast the love spell?"

Angel thought back, it wasn't exactly a time he wanted to remember. "Even Drucilla was going after him."

"And all those girls were acting as stupid as Doyle is!"

"Wanting to be with a person who you love is not stupid."

"Yeah, well alienating the people who love you is. And Doyle's smarter than that."

Angel thought for a moment.

"Come on!" Cor urged. "He brought a stake in here tonight!"

"I'll find her," Angel said, lifting himself from the table.

"Kay," Cordelia replied, as she did the exact same thing. "I'll find him."

***

The world was bloody. Red streaks covered the little animals that frolicked over the African plains and the continent of Europe was so crimson it was indistinguishable. Someone had obviously not taken the advice posted in big bubbley letters over the world: "Love the Earth" and then, under the planet, in white writing, now stained with red streaks "Earth day 99"

When Cordelia looked at the poster it bothered her, though she couldn't quite say why. But she didn't have time to think about it, as soon as she stepped out of the seedy bar, much to the disappointment of all the patrons, she saw Doyle, slumped on the wall across from the poster. His eyes were closed and he almost blended into the wall. If she hadn't been looking very hard she would have missed him, and those who passed him and weren't looking missed him entirely. He was practically invisible, which is exactly what he wanted.

"Doyle!" she gasped, falling to her knees and pulling him out of his hiding. "God you look like hell."

"Noahallsurpprise," Doyle slurred. He was drunk, which was only to be expected. But not pleasantly drunk, like usual, with his wild, unbelievable stories and his tendency to break out into a drinking song. He was seriously drunk. Drunk to forget and to disappear.

"Yeah, I'm sure," Cordy said dissmissivly as she grabbed his arms and forced him to his feet. He still leaned heavily on the wall, but at least he was on his feet.

"You're an absolute wreck," she sighed. "Come on."

"'ere we goin'?" he asked softly.

"Home," she said solidly reaching to grab his hand and lead him to his near by apartment. But when she took his hand she let go of it on impulse. She looked down, there was warm blood on her hand and she was sure it was his. His hands were a bloody mess, and the blood seemed to be coming from his knuckles, which were worn more than raw, and the bloody poster started to make sense. Doyle had engaged in a fist fight with the world, and the world won, Cordelia would have wanted to disappear too. "We've gotta get you cleaned up," she said, taking his hand again and leading him away.

***

"You're not invited," Tenny's voice cut very clearly through the previously empty apartment.

Angel looked up with a start, if he had a heart it would have stopped. Angel wasn't afraid of much, the stuff of nightmares was everyday for him, but nothing frightened him more than a beautiful witch. Because nine times out of ten, when a witch was beautiful it meant she was good, and the only people who had ever, truly, harmed him.

"Doyle invited me," he said, standing his ground, but not daring to approach her. "He said, 'You should drop buy sometime'."

"So you dropped by?"

"Yeah."

"To kill me?"

"No."

"You can't lie," she said angrily, "Allen saw it."

"Allen?"

"You don't even know his first name."

"I know what he tells me," Angel said, "And I know him. Do you?"

"What are you getting at?"

"I found this," he said, holding up the scorched dove's hide. "Unless I'm very mistaken, this is Doyle's blood."

"If your going to accuse me of something, do it."

"You cast a spell on him."

"So?"

"He doesn't love you."

"He seems to think so."

"It's not real."

"To him it is."

"Do you love him?"

"No," She said simply. "I don't even like him, but I don't see how that matters."

"Eventually he'll figure it out."

"Then he'll work all the harder for me to win my love."

"I can't let you do this."

"He's happy."

"It's not real."

"Again I say, it is to him. And who the hell are you to take it away from him?"

"I'm his friend."

"When was the last time your friends stood in the way of your happiness."

"My friends don't want me to be happy."

"Right," she said. "Because then you would kill them."

"It's a lose-lose situation," Angel said flatly. "Doyle's in the same position right now."

"Is he?" She laughed, "He could stay with me, live here, and sure be my slave for the rest of his life, but be perfectly happy doing it. Or he could return to his life with you. Living in the darkness, hiding in the shadows, being no more than your little sidekick. Do you wish that life for him?"

Angel felt he had to be honest, "No."

"Then leave."

Angel looked down, before walking towards her, towards the door. He paused, as they were standing shoulder to shoulder. "If you hurt him," Angel said, his voice all warning, "I promise I'll kill you."

"And Doyle will hate you," she said coldly.

"Reality has a price," Angel said, "he understands that." Then he walked out.

***

"Drink this," Cordy said, handing Doyle a teacup and saucer filled with back coffee.

"T'anks," Doyle muttered, taking the cup and staring into the blackness.

"Do you fell better?"

"I feel," Doyle said. "I guess tha's somethin'."

"What do you mean?" Cordelia said softly.

"I'da'know." Doyle slurred as he closed his eyes and laid his head back against the wall.

Cordelia reached over and pulled the coffee she had just given him out of his hands. "You're an absolute mess," she told him as she walked back into her kitchen. "We have to clean you up." She came back out with a bottle of rubbing alcohol, a bowl of warm water, a rag and a some gauze.

"Wha's all tha' fer?" Doyle muttered, looking at Cordelia through bloodshot eyes.

"Your hands," Cordy said, taking up his limp right hand. "I'm sure it was a stellar fight. But I'm gonna have to declare the wall the winner."

"Yeah," Doyle said. "I think your right."

"So, why did you anyhow?"

"Did I what?"

"Get in a fist fight with an earth day poster."

"'Cause it hurt."

"Oh, then you'll love this," Cor said, putting the rag with rubbing alcohol on it on his raw knuckles.

"Ah!" he gasped as he jerked his hand back. Cordelia glared at him, grabbed his hand and held it firmly so he couldn't pull away as she continued to clean his ravished hands.

"So," she asked after a moment of silence, what's with the needing of the pain?"

"'Scuse me?" Doyle asked.

"I mean," Cordy said, not looking up from her work. "I don't think I've ever done anything because it would hurt me. How messed up is that?"

"I didn't do it because I wanted to hurt myself," Doyle tried to explain. "I did it because everything hurt so much."

Cordelia looked up and stared at him blankly.

"E'rey time I move my head, it feels like I's gonna explode, an' e'ery second I'm away from Tenny I's like an eternity in hell, and every time I think about what I saw in my vision I get sick, an' every time I think a' wha' I was gonna do to Angel, an' what I did do to you, I feel like killing my self. Nothin' doesn't hurt, princess, that's why I was hittin' the wall."

She shook her head. "That' is the stupidest reason for starting a fight with a wall that I have ever heard." She told him.

Doyle took a deep, hurt, breath and slumped back on the couch.

"I swear, if us women weren't around, you guys would die from sheer stupidity."

"Tha's more likely n' I'd care to admit."

"I guess it's ok though,"

"Ok?" Doyle said, glancing up at her.

"Sometimes," she said, with a warning in her voice, "It's nice to clean up after you guys."

Doyle wanted to ask her 'really,' but he knew that she would just hurt him more so he smiled and let her play nurse or mother or whatever game kept her amused. He closed his eyes and concentrated on how soft and gentle her hands were. He was sure she thought he was asleep, and after another minute or so, he was.

***

Angel wrapped his knuckles on Cordelia's door, before glancing behind him at the rapidly raising sun. Cordy had a lovely outdoor walkway that led up to her apartment, and it faced directly east, which meant that most of the time the path to the door was nice and shady, except for early in the morning, when it threatened to turn him into flambeau. Angel could feel the heat on the back of his neck, and it might have just been his imagination, but he thought he could start smelling smoldering flesh. Angel panicked and burst into the door, only to see Cordelia a foot away, moving to open it.

"Hey," she said, laughing at the panicked look on his face, "Come in outa the sun?"

"I panicked," Angel admitted, more than a little ashamed.

"Yeah, I guess," Cor scoffed. "Coffee?"

Angel closed the door and took a deep breath, "Sure."

"Did you hear that Dennis?" Cordy said to the whole room.

"Dennis is getting coffee?" Angel asked uncertainly as he followed Cordy into the living room.

"The guy's a real gourmet!" Cor said, "You should see the stuff he does in the kitchen, only thing is," she said under her breath, so Dennis wouldn't hear. "He's kinda dead, so he can't really taste anything he cooks, so if he, um, experiments, it usually turns out kinda, uneatable."

"I see," Angel said as a cup of coffee floated towards him. He took it carefully, not quite sure when Dennis let go of it. "Thank you," he said, like Cordy not quite sure where to address. He took a sip of the steaming coffee and was very glad that his dead tongue could not be burned. "This is terrific," he said not entirely lying, before he got down to business. He turned to Cordelia, "Did you find Doyle?"

"Oy," she said, nodding towards the couch, "found him in an alley, he's been out cold for a couple of hours now."

"Is he alright?" Angel asked, rushing over to his friends side.

"Sure," Cor said following him casually. "I mean he was as drunk as a skunk and lost a fist fight with the wall . . ."

"Fist fight with a wall?"

"And then he moped about how much everything hurt, Oh, and get this, he started the fight with the wall because everything hurt."

Angel looked down at his sleeping friend, concerned. "Everything hurt?"

"Have you ever heard anything so crazy in you life!"

"Makes sense to me," Angel said softly. "How long has he been sleeping?"

"Oh, a couple of hours, probably since one," Cordy shrugged. "I'm surprised he lasted that long, he was totally smashed. And not like regular Doyle drunkenness, more like Jimmy Hendrix drunkenness."

"Hum," Angel said compassionately. He had a fairly good idea what was going on and everything Cordy told him fit into that perception perfectly.

"So," she asked. "Did you find her?"

"Yes," Angel said.

"And . . ."

"You were right, she's a witch."

Cordy's eyes doubled in size, "A witch witch? Like boil, boil, toil, and trouble, caldron burn and boil bubble?"

"Toil and trouble would be accurate. After I went to her place I did a little research to try and figure out what spells she's been casting, and I'm pretty sure that along with your standard love spell,"

"I knew he was whammied!"

"She's also been slipping him a potion that makes him have visions,"

"She can do that?"

"Yes,"

"Why haven't we ever done that!"

"Cordelia,"

"There are some time's we've been seriously low on cash! Vision by command would not be a bad thing!"

"Look at him," Angel said a little harshly, "He said everything hurt. Think about how much pain he's in every time the Powers That Be decide they have something to tell us. Now imagine that five times a day, seven days a week. They control the power for a reason, they know how best to use it. When start playing around with it, that's when this type of thing happens."

Cordy sighed, letting go of the idea of customers on call. When ever he had a natural vision she pitied him so much she almost felt sick. She couldn't imagine putting him through that on purpose. "Bitch," she spat out, "What would she want with his visions anyway? I mean, I met the woman, and she may be all supernaturally, but she's was not sent to earth to fight evil. What else are they good for?"

"Information in a war is always valuable."

"War?" Cordy asked, "Don't you think that's a little dramatic?"

"She works for Wolfram & Hart."

"Oh, then I guess not," She tilted her head, "So, did you kill her?"

"What?! No," Angel said defensively.

"Why not?" Cor asked, "You're gonna do it eventually, Doyle said he saw it. Plus she's a bad guy, and, If I'm not mistaken, the whole point of your being here is to defeat the bad guys."

"She's a human, I can't just kill her."

"She's an Evil human."

"She has a soul."

"An evil soul!"

"Cordelia I can't," Angel said, making it very clear that was that. "Besides," He added. "Doyle loves her . . . and he's happy."

"He Loves her!!" Cordelia practically yelled, Angel was afraid his friend would wake up, but the exhausted half demon slept on. "He's happy! Did you forget about the love spell? It's not real, he's enchanted! And what about the pain?! You're saying he's happy with the pain?!!"

"You saw him when he was with her."

"And I saw him try and stake you tonight!" She said, furious at all the physical men it the room. "She's a big black widow spider and as far as she's concerned he's just a little fly spinning around in her web and any happiness he may think he has is totally fake!"

"It feels real to him!" Angel pointed out. Not being able to be truly happy, not even being able to hope for true happiness for himself only made him want it all the more for his friends. "If he's happy who are we to take it away from him?"

"Did she tell you that?"

Angel opened his mouth but found that he didn't have anything to say. He was using her argument, and even if he did believe it, he knew it would hold no credence with Cordelia simply because it was hers.

"And you bought it!" She said in disgust before walking over to the table to get her bag and coat.

"Where are you going?" Angel said nervously as she walked across the room and opened the door.

She paused in the doorframe, bathed in direct, golden, sunlight. "To talk to her."

"Cordelia, no!" Angel ordered, fruitlessly. "She's a powerful witch. You don't know what she's capable of."

"Yeah, well, no one messes with my friends," Cor said, drawing on her years as queen of Sunnydale to give her the strength to face off a witch and defy a vampire. "Someone's got to put the little whore in her place and I'm getting the feeling that neither of you are going to."

"Don't go!" Angel ordered, taking a threatening step forward, but stopping short in front of the sunlight that cascaded in through the open door.

"Sorry Angel," she said, "But some things a girl's gotta do on her own." With that she turned and walked further into the sun and further away from Angel.

The vampire stood their, desiring nothing more than to break something, but to his credit he just turned back into the little apartment, "Dennis," he said in a crabby voice, "Would you mind . . ."

The door slammed shut.***

"Hi," Cordy said in her most friendly voice as she approached the security man in the nice down town offices of Wolfram and Heart. "I'm here to meet Tenny Sherman."

"Who?" The garud asked, glancing over his USA Today.

"Tenny Sherman, she's a paraleagel here," Cor said. She was starting to feel a little nervious, but it didn't show in her performance.

"Is she expecting you?"

"Ah-ha," Cordy chuckeled softly, "She's not." She leaned forward and wispered, as if she were exchanging secreats of the greatest importence. "You see, I'm an old freind of her's from highschool and my flight got layed over for like, a day, so she's not expecting me. I was kinda hoping to surprise her."

The kind looking sucurity gaurd smiled, Cordy had him. "What did you say her name was, Sherman?"

"Tenny Sherman," Cor said, leaning over the counter so she could look at his computer screan.

"You sure you have the right name."

She was sure that was the name Doyle had told her, but weather that was the woman's real name; Cordy had no idea. "Why?"

"I've, ah, got a listing of all the people in the building," He explained. "And there's not a Tenny Sherman."

Cordy bit her bottom lip and tryed to think of something to say, fortunetly, the garud keept talking. "As far as Sherman's go, we've got a Lenored Sherman in contracts, Lenny?"

"Ah-ha," Cordy laughed, "Don't think that's Her."

"Well, girl-wise theres, Andira, Catalan, and Tarissa."

"Tarissa!" Cordy said loudly, she knew, categorical, that that had to be her, even though she couldn't of said why.

"Ah, well, her office is on the thirteenth floor, and, ah, it looks like she's in." He looked up at her and smiled kindly. "I'll show you up there?"

"I'm sure I can find it."

"I'm afraid I have to go with you," he chukeled as he walked out from behind the desk. "Carl, I'm takin' a girl up to 1307, I'll be back down in five," he yelled to his partener who was glued to the wall of TV's showing the sicurity cameras, or more correctly, the episode of Gilligan's Island playing on the lowest screan in the right hand cornner. Carl muttered something indistinguisable which seemed to give Cordy's gard total freedom to leave.

"It's not that we don't trust you, you know," The garud explained as he led Cordy twards the elevator. "But we handel some pritty odd cases, you know real screwballs, so we can't be to carefull."

"Yeah," Cor said without thinking. "With all the evil accumulating in this building a random shoting would be, like, almost an understatement."

"What?" The garud asked.

"Well, you know, the evil, with the mosters and the demons . . ." the garud stared at her blankly. She laughed, despreat to not sound crazy, or not sound a little too smart. "And you have no idea what I'm talking about." She looked down and pushed her hair behind her ear in a very frivoluse, ignorent, teen-age girl kinda way. "It's an old joke we had, you know the whole, 'A lawyer dies, goes to hell and is weclomed there out of professional curtusy' type of thing. When I she told me she was gonna be a pera-legal we had a huge laugh over it."

The gaurde laughed, he baught it. "Yeah, Lawyer jokes are pretty taboo around here, you might wanna hush it up."

Cordy nodded, "Got'cha."

The Evlvator opened and the pair got in along with about a dozen other people. On their long, and often interupted jounry upward Cordy thought of something, which she asked as soon as they got off the elevator and started heading towards Tarissa Sherman's office. "Don't most buildings not have thirteenth floors?" She asked the gaurd. "You know, jump from twelve to fourteen?"

The gard chuckled, "That old superestion, Wolfram and Heart are far beyond those sorts of things."

Cordy laughed out loud but turned it into a caugh before he noticed.

"Here you are," The gaurd said, knocking on the door.

"Come In," Tarissa's voice said from the other side of the door, she sounded buissy and distarcted.

The gaurd looked at Cordelia expectently. She took a deep breath and opened the door. "Hey Girl friend," she said enthusiasticaly, but with a sharpness that came from pure hatered.

"Oh my God," Tarissa muttered angerly looking up from a huge pile of minilla folders.

"Bet you didn't expect to see me."

The gaurd was all smiels, "We'll now that the two of you are hooked up I'm atta get back to my post."

"Thanks," Cordelia said with a huge smile.

The garud smiled back before turning and leaving. Once he was out the door the room tempretuer droped to well below frezzing.

"So this is your office, hunh?" Cordy said looking around at the beighg walls broken up only by gray fileing cabnets. "Ever bring Doyle here?"

"What are you doing here?" Tarissa growled.

"No," Cordy muused, "I guess not, Because if you had he would know that you were evil."

"You have no right to be jelous," Tarissa spat. "You had your chance with him and you didn't care."

"This isn't about me," Cordelia said angerly. "This is about him!"

"He trys to kill your boss, why'd you come to me?"

"You put him up to it you witch," Cordy growled.

"He did it," She said simply, "Of his own free will."

"Funny, the way Angel tells it you cast a spell on him and he stoped thinking."

"His choice."

Cordy laughed in her face. "You need a dictionary, because you're deffinition of choice is way outa wack."

"Choice: when two or more options are presented, acting on the option which seems more benifical, all things considered."

"Hum," Cordy mused, "Maybe you don't need a dictionary."

"Why don't we have a little workshop on the concept of choice," Tarissa said, getting up and walking around her desk. "You have a choice, you could go with me quitely or I could blow your brains out." Tarissa leveled a gun to cordelia's forhead.

"Ok," Cor said, taking deep breaths and trying really hard not to panic. "Maybe you do need that dictionary after all, you're deffinition of options is deffinetly not Kosher."

"Make a choice," Tarissa said in a sing songie voice.

Cordy closed her eyes and swollowed, Angel and Doyle would understand, she tryed to tell herself, and they would forgive her. Opening her eyes, and ventuering a shaking breath, she said, "What do you want me to do?"

***

Angel looked up to the five cards floting in the air. Dennis seemed to be considering his hand very carefully, he must have something, or the beguining of something, or on the other hand he might just be a bad player trying to decide between two mistakes. Angel had played pocker with thousands of people, and other things, over hundreds of years But he had never seen a better poker face that invisibility and muteness.

Two cards flowted twards him, face down. Angel took them and set then on the tabel, next to the pile without sneeking a peak. "Two for you," Angel said as he drew two cards and held them out until a hand he couldn't see grabed them. Once they were safely in Dennises hand Angel took his own cards. "And Dealer takes three."

If Angel hadn't been such an experienced pocker player he would have sighed, Two pair, eights and jacks, not a good hand at all. But he keept his stoic face, and hoped that, under his invisibility, Dennis was swetin' up a storm.

"Alright," Angel said, "annie up."

"To late to join the game?" Doyle croaked from across the room.

"Doyle!" Angel said, droping his cards and rushing over to talk to his freind. "How you doing?" Angel asked as he helped the half demon into a sitting position before taking a place next to him on the couch.

"I've been worse," Doyle said, not even daring to look at his freind. "Not often, but recenlty."

"You up for a talk?"

"Better to get it done with right away, yeah? Keep the bad feelings from becoming, worse feelin's?"

Angel almost smiled. "I don't want to sound judgementel . . ."

"No man, you have every right to juge me."

"What's going on?"

Doyle shook his head and looked twards Cordelia's kitchen in the distence while his eyes focused inwards. "I'da'know. The world kalidascoped and I'm not quite sure wha' I see."

"What about the vistion."

The mear mention of the word made Doyle's head hurt. "I saw you kill 'er, I guess it made me a little crazy."

"What, exactly, did you see?"

"You 'an her in the subway, and then her, dead."

"Did you see me kill her?"

"Wha'?"

"The acctual act of murder, did you see me murder her."

Doyle pondered it for a moment, "No," He addmitted, "I guess I didn'"

Angel smiled at him, a friends sympithetic smile.

Doyle tryed to smile back, but there was too much un-explained to permit warm fuzzies.

"You see the thing of it is," Doyle started. "I've been in love before, more often than I'd care to admit, and there are those moments of pure euforia but their intersperced with those moments a pain and fear. With Tenny, there was none of that, it was all euforia." He blinked and looked down at his hands. "To a point, then it was all pain. All fear, all lose. She was like a drug, I'd do anything to get that high back, you know? Ta feel the way I felt when she firs' touched me." The more Doyle thought of that analogy, the more it made sence to him, so he flew with it. "It was a lot like bein' high, I guess. I never really felt alive, never really felt there."

"You weren't there," Angel told his freind in a hused, deadly serious yet compassionet voice. "She enchanted you. Most of the things you did, things you felt, were imposed upon you. Nothing was real."

Sudently, his life over the past few days made total sence. Majic was a way of cutting corrners and bypassing reality. Manipulating the world to work in an unnatueral way. It was tenyouus at best and could usualy be broken by something as simple as a few muttered words or a comglomeration of some common erbs. In short, all that had to happen was for someone to say, catigoricaly (but not nessisarily in their own language) stop it. And because the rules were always much more powerfull than those braking them, the magitians had to comply. The spell collapsed and naught was gained.

Doyle knew, that in most spells consurning a person, all the person had to do was learn that they were enchanted and the spells powere was lost, assuming that the person didn't want to be enchanted.

Earlyer that night, Doyle would have wanted to be enchanted. All the pain, all the fear, it added up to nothing when in comparison to the way he felt when she was near him. And that still held. But as he remebered what he had tried to do to Angel: his one real freind, the best soul he'd ever know, his path to redemption: Nothing on the whole earth was worth that.

The Enchantment was broken, and replaced by a new pain, the pain of knowing that everything was fake, and over the last few days he had burned several bridges and all he had left was the smell of smoke and wartery eyes.

"Angel man," Doyle said, his voice cracking, "I'm so sorry."

"Forget it," Angel said, with unnatueral good natuer. "You were under a spell, it's not your fault."

"Still," Doyle said with conviction. "I started feeling so good that I stoped thinking, She may have had my heart tangeled in a majical web, bu' my head should have been clear. I should a though' abou' wha' I was doin' an' sayin' an' I didn'."

"You weren't yourself."

"True enough," He said. "But that was hardly Tenny's fault. I let myself act the way I did. It was my fault, an' I's up ta me ta make it right." He glanced up, his eyes begging for forgivness, and betraying the fact that he was sure he would not get it.

Angel was all to fimiller with that feeling, and as much as it was a part of him, it was tourtuer seeing it in his friends eyes. He slaped Doyle lovingly on the back. "I think a pint of guiniss would about cover it."

Doyle looked up, disbeliving.

"It's been years since I've been able to have guinnes with someone who would appriciate it," Angel said, smileing. He needed Doyle as a freind far more than he needed bitterness or pride.

"It's an art," Doyle said, daring to shed a small smile.

"And it's impossible to find a good Irish pub in Claifornia."

"Don't I know."

"And I figuer if anyone knows where they are, I'd be you."

"There's a pretty good one under a shop on South and Harlem."

"Isn't that in china town?"

"Practicaly, but not quite." Doyle said, happy that he could talk with Angel about nothing after all he had intended to do. "You see it's rented out to these sisters, Meghan and Jenny Delanie . . ."

His story was interupted by the tinkeling of Cordys phone. The two men stoped their discustion and listened as the answering macien picked it up.

"Angel," Cordy's voice was trembeling. "Um, I know you're there, pleas pick up."

"I'm here," Angel said, snaching the phone up in less than one of Cordelia's raceing heartbeats. "What's the matter?"

"I think I made a mistake," She wimpered. Angel, Doyle and Dennis listened tensly to her voice progeted through the answering macien, all three of them could hear that she was crying.

"Are you alright," he asked, even though he knew very well that he wasn't.

There was a slight shuffel as the phone was pulled away from her.

"She's fine," Tarissa said sharply. "And she will be fine as long as you do exactly as I say."

Angel stole a glance at Doyle, the young demon had never looked so forlorn.

***

Angel had the distinct pleasuer of having been in every subway in the world. He had seen the classy stations in Paris, the efficent subways of Moscow and the trashy subways of New York. As subway's go, L.A.'s was a little under par. It was not to dirty, but on the other hand it was almost always empty. In a country where the human/car ratio was about 1 to 1 and a in a part of said counrty where the word 'centralization' was not in any one's vocabulary, public transportation was not overly used.

Angel waited anxiously in the dark. Tenny, or Tarissa as her mail box said, had turned out to be more dangerious than a nest of Vampiers, heard of demons or flocks of minions from hell. All those things Angel could fight, simply and easaly, with a battel ax an centurys of experience. She had manipulated and used and he wasn't quite sure how to combat that. But more than anything, she had used his freinds as tools against him, and she had hurt them in the process. Angel felt like he was just another one of her pawns, someone to push around in her head game, and he hated that feeling, but he couldn't excape it.

"This is where she said to meet." Angel said solidly as he glanced around. They were in the shadows around the edge of an almost abandoned subway platform. The only person in sight was a vagabond sleeping on the other end of the tract.

Doyle didn't say anything.

"Are you alright?" Angel asked after a muinet.

"No," the young seer answered honestly.

"Well," Angel stuttered, "Is there . . ."

"No," Doyle intereupted.

"But . . ." Angel satarted, turning towards his freind.

"Here they come," Doyle said, not letting the vampier get another word out.

Cordelia seemed to be leading Tarissa into the dark shadows, however, it was obvious that Cor was paying no attention to where she was going. Tarissa on the other hand was almost overly aleart and walking with a haughty air. She took firm steps and, every now and then, pushed Cordelia rughly on the back. Angel could feel the majic that was eminating from the woman like most people could feel a clold wind. It was wraped around Cordelia and reaching twards Doyle.

"Stop," Tarissa ordered. She was obviosly talking to Cordelia, who was quite obviously caught in the beauriful witches majical spell, but it worked for everyone within earshot: Doyle and Angel froze. "Here we are," she said, glairing at the two men. "Allen."

"Tenny," he said softly, steping forward so he was slightly infront of Angel. He looked at Cordelia, and all the guilt and grief he felt stabed him like a knife. "Let her go," he begged softly.

"Sure," Tarissa said, not moving to break her spell. "I don't want her, I want you."

He sruged, "I'm yours."

"Doyle," Angel said nerviously. "You don't have . . ."

He laughed sadly and looked at the ground, "It's not like that." He looked up at the woman he had thought he loved, "You didn't have to do this," he told her. "I would have done anything. All you had to do was ask."

"I asked you to kill him and you faild me," Tarissa said angerly. "I needed clateral."

"You've got me now."

"Kill him."

"No."

"Someones going to die tonight," Tarissa said angerly. "You chose who."

"No one has to die."

"Kill him or I'll kill her."

"No," Doyle said, his voice raw. "I'll go with you, just leave Angel and Cordelia alone. Their inocent."

"You know what you saw!"

"I do know what I saw, I saw Angel, and I saw you, but I didn't see the two of you together."

"Is that supposed to make me feel safe? You could be lieing."

"You have to trust me."

"Why?"

"Because, I think you know you can."

She laughed, a harsh, horrible laugh. "So you won't kill him?"

"No."

"Than she dies," Tarissa said simply, before snaping her fingers.

Cordelia let out a blood curdiling scram as she grabed her head and colapsed to her knees. Angel ran over to her, grabbing her sholders, but unable to stop whatever monsters were asalting her in her mind.

"No!" Doyle yelled, taking an angry step twards Tarissa. "Let her go!"

"Kill him," She said, pronouncing each word very clearly.

"He won't kill you!"

"I want him dead."

"Is this about your job?" He demanded. "Some twisted assasination?"

That particular insight surprised Tarissa, Cordelia stoped screaming and colapsed into the Vampiers arms.

Doyle smiled, dispite the fact he felt like crying. "That's it isn't it? All this to stop Angel, everything for Wolfram and Hart."

"You knew my carirrer came first," She said jokingly.

Doyle looked down at Cordelia and Angel, helpless on the floor. This was his fight and the only way he could see to win was surrender. He hoped that his freinds would understand that.

"You won't win points wi'h the big demon's upstairs by killin' her, you gatta know tha'."

"I won't kill her if you kill him."

"An' I'm no' gonna do that," Doyle said. "So you're great asperations seem to be haulted."

"I can't except that," She said, Cordelia started screaming again.

Doyle looked at her and started to panic, "I'll tell you wha' I will do, I'll go wit' ya."

Cordelia stoped screaming. "What?" Tarissa asked.

"I'll leave, go wit' ya. Never talk to Angel again."

"That hardly . . ."

"Tha' does a lot," Doyle said, knowing he was exaduerating. "I'm his cumpus, I help him find the evil tha' he fights. Before he met me he wasn' even wort' Wolfram and Hart's notisin' and wit'out me he won't be again."

She seemed to be considering the offer.

"Doyle, you don't have to do this, there are . . ." Angel started. Tarissa glanced at him, anoyed and Angel was emidetly distratcted by Cordelias anguished scrams.

"Trust me," Doyle begged. "I's somthin'."

"Fine," she spat angerly. She snaped her fingers and Cordelia gaspt for breath and burried her head in Angle's chest, Tarissa's hold on her broken. "A train will stop here in a muinet," She told Doyle. "We're getting on it, and Oh, Angel, if you even think about following us you're beautiful young secritary will never get the chance to be old and ugly."

The beautiful young secritarty was starting to realize where she was and what was going on, she pushed herself away from Angel, "What?" She asked Grogely.

"Doyle, no," Angel said, he was still holding Cordelia, who was not aware enough to sit up by her own power. "You don't have to do this."

"I'm sorry man," Doyle said sadly. "But of the opptions you have ta agree, this ones the best."

"Doyle," Cordy slurred, turning to look at him with bloodshot eyes framed in a bruse he gave her.

"Tell 'er I say goodby," Doyle said sadly as the subway pulled up and Tarissa pulled him on.

Angel watched the door slide shut, and the train role away, carrying his friend, his best freind, his only freind, the truest freind he had ever had in his twohundered years of life, away, out of his life, persumibly, forever.

***

"Stop your goddame humming," Tarissa demanded.

"Sorry," Doyle said softly, clompying. "I's jus' one of those tunes, ya know? The kind tha' seem ta fit a situation so perfectly you can' stop thinkin' abou' it."

"Shutup."

Again, he complyed. They were still on the subway. They had been on the subways for nearly two houers, train hopping, tring to losse Angel, just in case he has followed, wich Doyle knew he hadn't. The Braken demon didn't even know where they were, and Braken demons were renowned for their sence of direction.

"Where are we going?" Doyle finally dared to ask.

"Back."

"Wha?"

"Back to the stop we started at," she told him. "Few more stops and we're there."

"Oh," Doyle said simply. "Why?"

"Because that's where I want to be."

Doyle nodded, "I see."

"You know you won't live through the night, don't you?"

"I kinda suspeccted."

"You're not as dumb as you look."

"So I've been told."

"You won't fight, will you?"

"I'm not sure I'd know how," Doyle said sadly. "I couldn't hurt you."

"You're right, you couldn't."

"Tha's not what I meant." Doyle said, "I know I was enchanted, an' I'm pretty sure tha' I's broken now. Bu' I still love you. You're better than this an' your better then them."

"What are you trying to say."

"Tha' you don't need to be this way," he insisted. "You're fightin' for the worng side, but it's not too late to switch."

"The wrong side!" She said. "Look at Wolfram and Hart! Everyone there has power and money, look at you, you have neather. How do you expect to win this?"

"I don't expect to," Doyle said honestly. "But I know that eventualy good will win. The fact tha' poor people like Cordy, Angel, an me are winnin' batteles every day is proffe of that." He laughed at the cleshayedness of the phrase he was about to say, "We have plenty of power and riches, just not by the worlds standards."

"Those are the only standards that matter."

"I'm sorry you belive tha'," Doyle said saddly.

"And I thought I told you to shut up."

Doyle nodded and closed his mouth, turning to look at the world stream by around them. After another stop streemed by, Doyle started humming to himself again.

"I thought I told you to stop it," Tarissa snaped.

"I figuer if I have about fifnteen muinets to live I might as well spend them however I want."

"Fine," Tarissa muttered.

Doyle hummed a few more bars before starting to sing softly under his breath,

"Murder's just a word, for lack of something eles to say,

Murder's just a game, for lack of something eles to play,

Blood is just a shade, on the palet of your blushing body

Blood is not afreid, of all of this internal bleeding

Put your figer, put your finger on it

Somethings got me, sothings got my heart by the throught.

Love is just a flame, burning us with indiscression

Love is not to blaim if murder is a mans invention

Love is not a man's invention,"

"Shut up!" Tarissa yelled angerly, interupting his song.

Doyle looked at her with his deep, insightfull eyes, "Like I said, one of those tunes that fits the situation perfectly."

"Get up, this is our stop," She ordered. As Doyle was standing the train jerked to a hault, the cintrifical force propelled him to knock into Tenny, who was standing infront of him. She turned and looked at the young irishman with uttere contempt. "Don't touch me."

"My mistake," Doyle said softly.

She grabbed the sleve of his jacket and pulled him infront of her, "Out."

Doyle nodded and obayed. As he stumbeld onto the empty platform, he wondered at how little he felt. A touch of sadness due mostly to a bundel of regrets he wasn't strong engouh to think about, but other than that nothing. He wasn't really afraid, or angery, or any other emotion he thought he should feel. He just wished there were some things he would have gotten a chane to do and say, but it didn't prarticularly bother him. Growing up he had heard the storyes of the great christian mayrters and he had been instructed to pray for the curage of Steven. Through the years he had come to belive that The Powers That Be had not seen it fit to give him that particular virtue. But as he faced the seemingly unavoidable death he found himself oddly at peace, and he half suspectted that he had more Steven in him than his meger prayers had erned.

Only Tarissa and Doyle chose to exit onto the dark and desirted platform, and as the train rumbeled away the young Irishman took his last breiths of the subway's moldy air.

"Stand over here," Tarissa snaped as she grabed him and pulled him to a position over the yellow striped line telling people where not to stand. He was dangeriously close to the pit tracks and Doyle suddently understood that, however she killed him, probibly through some majic, the police would think it was an accident. He triped and fell on the tracks.

"You're very clever," Doyle said, looking at the endless dark pit behind him. "No one'll ever suspect you fer my murder."

"Exactly."

"Only thing is," Doyle mused, "Angel'll know."

"What?"

"And he'll tell."

"He wouldn't."

"He wanted to protect me, an' he had to protect Cordelia," Doyle explained. "I'm dead, she safe, and you've got nothin' ta bargin wit'." He laughed at the hole she had dug for herself. "I guess you're plans didn't quite work out."

"He wouldn't dare."

"He wouldn't have a reason not to."

Another train was aproching, Tarissa glanced at it's lights in the distence, and Doyle had to fight to fight temtation not to. She turned back to him with a look of utter evil in her eyes, Doyle's heart quickened. He wasn't afraid of horrible death, but he was sudently afraid of her, and what she was capabel of . "I'll just have to kill him first."

"No," Doyle begged.

"Goodbuy Allen," She said as the Train got closer, she took a step forward and moved to rughly shove him onto the dark track, right infront of the barriling train.

Doyle didn't have much time to brace himself from her push or for her new determination to kill Angel. He fell backwards unabel to catch himself, but in a breaths time he came up with a crude plan that just might save Angel. He reached out blindly and grabed her wrist, pulling her down with him.

The next few seconds were a whirlwind of pain and shock. He heard the subways old breaks screach and Tenny scream in terror and then pain and then there was utter silence. The world was all darkness, then all red and then all white and then darkness again.

The dark silence lasted for an indefinet amount of time before Doyle started to hear his own heartbeat and the stedy puls of his breath. He managed to open his eyes only to see another set of open eyes stairing up at him.

"Oh God," He choked out, as bile forced it's way up his throught. Tarissa was there, with him in the space between the platform and the tracks, almost under the train proper. Her body was ravaged on one side, and perfectly fine on the other. On the right, the majority of what Doyle saw should have been covered by skin, but was not, and her head had been totaly flatened on the right, letting gray matter ozze and drip down to the right. There was blood everywhere and there was so much of it. Doyle didn't have time to wonder how much of it was his, he was too consumed with utter horror.

He heard people approching, everyone on the subway had to know that something was wrong, and it was inconsevible that the driver didn't know that he had hit a person. They would come looking for them, and Doyle had a very strong feeling that he couldn't be found. He somehow managed to find his knees and crawl away from the bloody mess.

He crawled to the end of the train, wich was still in the darkness of a tunnel. He looked around very carefully and fearfully, but he was utterly alone in the darkness of the subways. As he stumbeled to his feet his head srceamed with pain. he reached up to cradel his throbing head in his hands, only to discover that at some point he had turned into a demon. He shook it off, but that only made him hurt more, Braken demons were strong, and he could have used that strenght, but he never felt comfortable embracing his darker side to get something as transient as streingth.

He managed to find his way onto a walkway above the tracks and eventualy, to another subway platform that was well lit and moderetly populated as people started getting off of work and going to warm homes where wife and kids were waiting with supper and affection.

Doyle could hear the buissness men talk, "Did you hear about that thing at the thrirty-fourth steet station?"

"There was a thing."

"Yeah, some idot through themselves infront of a train."

"God your kidding."

"I wish I where, then we wouldn't have such a goddamn delaye."

"Yeah, honesstly, how long does it take to clean that sort of thing up?"

"The city should be prepared for this, the number of druggies and derilices that run around down here, I'm supprised there isn't a body on the tracks once a week."

"Damn Delaighes, Cindy's gonna kill me."

He wanted to grab the clean lapeles of the buissnesmens suits and remind them that inconvience was what made life real and that going home to an angry Cindy was a thousand times better than going home to no body and mostly that the bloody body they taked so casualy about was so much more than a delaigh. But he knew if he stoped to say anything he would not beable to start again, he would colaps on the floor infront of the men and he had to keep going. Conciously, he was consintraiting on keeping concious, keeping one foot infront of another: he stumbeled forward, wandering twards his appartment subconciously.

"Breath in, breath out," he reminded himself, as he found his way to the stairs and stumbeled onto L.A.'s hot and dirty streets. He didn't knotic the way people looked at him on the streets or the heat of the day, or how cool the wind was, or how muggy his appartment building was or how soft his bed as he colapsed onto it, he just keep consintraiting on his words, "Inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale, dovetail, set saild nightingale, blackmail, go to jail, make bail, prevail, unveil every detail, read the braille, put your fingers on it." He muttered himself as he drifted off to sleep.

***

"Cordelia," Angel said as the young actrice walked into his office the next morning.

"Angel," She replyed, matching his slightly mornfull tone.

"You're late."

"I had an audition."

"How'd it go."

"Good."

"Good."

She turned to him, "Did you . . . ?"

"No."

"Oh," she said, slouching down into her chair.

"It's still early," he said.

"Right."

"And one day, how much could happen?"

"Right," she said, forcing a laugh, "How much could happen."

They both knew the answere, so neither of them said anythig.

"I forgot to get a news paper," Cordy finally said, pushing herself away from the desk. Wordlessly she put the jacket she had just taken off back on and slung the bag she had recently hung up over her sholder. "I'll be right back," she told him as he walked out of the office door.

She didn't want to be there and Angel couldn't blaim her, he didn't want to be their either. Everything was the same and everything was diffrent. It had become uncomfortable when Doyle had started to chose Tenny over them, but now that he was hers forever the uncomfortable feeling turned to unbearable. Angel was insanely jelous of Cordelia's excuse to leave. But someone had to hold down the fort just in case one of those clients Cordy always talked about happened to drop in. He bussied himself in the empty office wattering plants and making coffee. He was in the middel of consolidating the trash when he heard the door open. He turned quickly to see Kate standing in the doorway, watching him.

"Angel."

"Kate."

"Are you buissy?"

"No."

She smiled timidly, "Don't you have employes to do that?"

"Cordelia's out," he explained quickly.

"And the guy? Loyal?"

"Doyle," Angel corrected. "He's gone."

Kate nodded, but didn't say anything, after a moment of silence Angel got the nerve to ask, "Is there a reason you needed to know where my staff is?"

Kate took a big breath and looked him in the eyes, "Did you hear about the subway incident yesterday afternoon."

Angel's still heart sank to his stomach as his mouth suddently went dry. "No."

"It happened just before rush houer," Kate explained, "In the station under thrirty-fourth street."

"What happened," Angel asked, paniced.

"Somebody fell on the tracks," Kate said. "It looks like an accident."

"But you suspect a murder."

"The train driver thinks that he saw two people fall on the track, but he's not sure. The only other witness, a drunk who was sleeping it off on the platform, said he saw a green spikie monster pull a girl onto the tracks."

"Green spiked moster?"

"I know, pretty crazy," Kate laughed. "That's not quite enough to warnent an investigation. However, the bloody tracks crawling away from the scean do."

"Why do you need me?" Angel asked, praying it wasn't to identify the body.

"I might need you to identify the body," Kate said candidly. She reached into her pocket, and pulled out an evidence bag. "We found this on the corps."

She handed it to him and Angel recognised it emedietly. It was one of his calling cards with nothing more than the number and the inegmatic symbol. He licked his lips, but his toung was dry so it didn't help.

"I . . . ah . . ." he stuttered. But before he could say anything deffinet Cordelia burst in the door.

"ANGEL!" She said, her head burried in the local news section of the Los Angeles Times, totaly unawaer of Kate's presents. "Listen to this! 'Thousands of commuters were delayed yesterday after an unidentified person threw themselves infront of a subway in the Thriry-fourth street staition. Witnesses say that the unidentified woman may have been pulled into the subway, but police cannot confirm that.'" She looked up with an amazing toothy grin. But before she could say anything eles she saw Kate, looking at her like she was some sort of murdere herself. Cordy chuchkeled nerviously as her smile sliped, "Hi Ditective, would you like some coffee?"

Kate glanced at Angel, then turned to Cordelia, sencing an easyer target. "What do you know about the subway crash?"

"Ha, ha," Cordy laughed nerviously, "Well, the paper said right here that she was a white woman between the ages of eighteen and thrity five, probibly a perfessional."

"So you're just excited every time some inocent young woman gets run over by a subway train."

"Inocent?" Cordy asked.

"Kate," Angel interjected, not at all sucure in his knoledg. He needed to do some detecting of his own and then, if it would help Kate, he would share information. "Those are buissness cards, I give them out all the time to total strangers, I have no idea who has them."

"She's very ecited about some poor girl getting run over by a train," Kate said, glancing at Cordeila. "Why not explian that one?"

Angel couldn't, thankfully, Cordelia could. "It's a, just that, we were there yesterday right before then."

Kate suddently became very interested, "Really? Why?"

Cordy looked around nervously, she didn't have a good answere, "Because we needed to be."

"Cordelia was coming back from downtown," Angel quickly inserted, it was more or less true. "I met her there. It's a dangerous naborhood and I didn't want anything to happen."

With any other people Kate would have been very suspicious, but Cordy was just flaky enough and Angel was just good enough that they were probibly telling the truth.

"Did you two see anything suspissious, anything at all?"

"No," Angel said quickly, before Cordelia could dig herself a verbel hole.

The detectevie nodded. She knew that her investigation was just superfluous. She was beeing synical, her Lutenitn had told her that it was an accident, no qusetions, she had persude this investigation without his knoledge, taking the evedence without his permission, and if she took the investigation any further she could get in seriuos trubel. She just needed to clear her concience and, talking to these two people, she had.

"I just needed to check up on these things," She tryed to explain to Angel appoligeticaly. "For my own peice of mind."

"I understand, and I wish I could help you more," he said ernestly.

"If you learn anything new or pertinent . . ."

"I'll let you know."

Kate nodded, "Thanks." she said, before leaving the office without a goodbuy.

***

Cordelia and Angel walked up the rickity, dirty stairwell to the third floor in Doyle's appartment building. The place was filthy, which was pretty standard, but the walls and the banastars and the floor were all staind with dark red, almost brown patches.

"This is discusting," Cordy said, running her finger over one of the dark spots. "What is this?"

"Blood," Angel said dryly.

Cordy shuttered and wiped her hands on the back of Angel's dark trench coat. "Thanks for the warning."

"And from the smell of it, it's Doyle's."

"Grate," Cordy said chipperly.

"Grate?" Angel asked, disbeliving.

"That'll mean he's here right?" She asked, "And pretty ok. I mean sure, he's bleeding, but he's can't be bleeding that bad if he could make it back here."

"Right," Angel said, swollowing hard. There was a lot of blood, and no one knew better than Vampiers how much a person needs blood to survive. Doyle might have been able to crawl to his appartment, but that didn't mean he hadn't died there. Angel had wanted to hear Doyle's story before he found the blood, but now he needed to hear it.

They reached the thrid floor and both of his freinds followed the bloody brown line to his door. Cordy knoced, there was no answer. She knocked again.

"Did you hear that?" Angel asked.

"Hear what?" Cor asked.

"It sounded like Doyle."

"I didn't hear a thing." Cordy said, "Maybe you should get your ears checked."

"He's in there," Angel said, relife laceing the edg of his voice. "And he's alive."

Cordy reached over and started knocking again, lowder this time. "DOYLE!" she practicaly yelled into the door. "Cordy and Angel! Let us in!"

"Shhhh," Angel said, listening very closely for the faint voice he was sure he had heard.

"Well?" Cordy asked after a moment of silence.

"I didn't hear anything."

"Maybe if we called him," Cor sugested as she pulled out her cell phone. Angel didn't have time for this, he backed up two steps so that he had a litte room, and then kicked down the door, splingering the wood and knocking out the dead bolt.

"Or we could kick down his door and tresspass," Cor said, folding up her cell phone and puting it back in her bag.

"Do you have a problem with that?" Angel asked consurend.

"Pleas," Cor scoffed as she walked into the dim appartment. It was vamp freindly, all the windows totaly covered and not a lamp was on. "Doyle?" Cordy asked softly as she endtered his dark appartment. "Doyle? We know you're hear."

The pair followed the blood trail to Doyle's bedroom, where they found him half-dead on his bed.

"Doyle," Cor said softly as she moved towards him. She knelt down beside the bed so her face was parallel to his face. He was lieing on his right side, probibly because the left side of his body was covered in bruses. Half of his face was a dark, unhelthy purple, wich was only broken up by the dark brown stains of dryed up blood. His arm looked like it had been snaped in half, and there was a huge gash along his leg, which Angel asummed accounted for most of the trailed blood. Tentivly, Cordelia reached forward and put her cool hand compassionetly on his cheek.

Like the kiss of a handsome prince woke up sleeping beauty, Cordy's touch was majical. The half-demon's soft gray eyes fluttered open, and his dry toung moved to wet his lips.

"Doyle?" Cordy asked breathlessly.

"Cordelia?" He choked out, before caughing. Cordelia didn't notice, but Angel saw flecks of blood come out of his friends mouth.

"God, you look like hell."

"T'anks," Doyle said, smieling with the good side of his face. He started to push himself up, but wasn't getting very far. Cordy reached to help him, but in the end it was Angel's intervention that got him to a sitting position. Cordy pushed herself up and sat next to Doyle, while Angel sat on his other side.

"Wha . . . Wha' are you two doin' here?" Doyle asked, his eyes focused infront of him at the point where the wall met the floor, his hands supporting the whieght of his head and covering his mouth and nose as he leaned forward.

"We came looking for you, duh," Cordy said. She would have slaped him affectionetly, but she was sitting on his battered and brused side and she didn't want to touch him.

"We know about Tenny," Angel said kindly. "We wanted to know if you were ok?"

Doyle turned to look at Angel, giving the compassionet vampier the whole, horrific two-faced effect. "Wha'da'ya think?"

"I don't know," Angel said, looking his freind in the eye. "That's why I asked."

Doyle smiled and looked away. "I'll live," he said softly. "And I'll feel better . . . just not any time in the forceeable futuer."

"You know we're here to help," Angel said softly, puting his hand on his freinds sholder.

"That means a lot," Doyle said, laughing saddly, "More than I can say."

"Don't mention it," Cordy said, boxing him lovingly on the arm. Unfortunetly for Doyle, that arm had severl hair line fractuers. He gaspt in pain as he cluched it to himself. "Oh," Cordy said, her eyes growing wide and appologetic, "I'm so sorry."

"You need to rest more," Angel said, pushing himself off of the bed. Doyle looked up at him, "We'll be right here," Angel assuered the young irishman, "In case you need anything."

Doyle opened his mouth to answer but before he got a word out he noticed that Angel was looking slightly to his left, scowling. The seer turned his gaze to Cordelia, who's expression qickly changed from that of anoyence to total compassion.

"Just like Angel said," she assuered him. "Right here."

Doyle smiled, he knew exactly what had transpiered between the two of them, and he loved the both of them all the more for it. "T'anks guys."

"Cordelia," Angel said as he walked to the doorframe and paused, waiting for her to join him.

Cor stood up, but before she moved towards Angel she leand over so she was at Doyle's eye level again. "It's good to have you back," She admitted, before leaning forward and kissing his cheek affectionetly, if not romanticaly. "Sleep sweet."

Doyle blinked a few times with wonder. "I will, princess."

Cordelia smiled at him before she walked out of the room. One last glance, and Angel was gone too. The door was shut and Doyle was alone in relitive darkness.

"Humm," He wondered. He knew the way the world workd, there should have been some great lesson about living and loving in this for him. Or maybe about trust and loyalty and freindship. She should have grown, but he didn't feel like he had. He should have felt something for Tenny, lieing dead in a subway, but all he could think about was how soft and tender Cordelias platonic kiss had been. And all he could feel was exhausted. After about a muinet of pondering he closed his eyes and setteled on his right side and slept for nearly two days straight. Cordelia or Angel or bother where there the whole time.

The End