Okay, I just finished Second Chance, and I wanted to do another Doyle story. So here we go again. I don't know how regular updates will be. I think I've done relatively well with the CD stories I've done, so I hope this sticks to form. My writing style has changed a lot, and I'm a bit preoccupied with my fourth novel right now, so I can't make any promises. Also, I'm starting Ohio State University in the fall, so I can't be sure if I'll even be writing at all come September.

Title: Light at the end of the Tunnel

Rating: R. unusual for me I know, but this is going to start off dark, and highly sexual, and work it's way toward being lighter.

Summary: Cordelia doesn't die at the end of Season 5 and Fred is herself. Connor is still gone, and Angel still owns Wolfram and Hart. It becomes obvious to the PTB that if they don't do something to alleviate the anguish Cordelia is in, that she will die, either from a demon or by her own hand. So they send the one person who started it all. One Allan Francis Doyle to save her.

Dedication: To Glenn Quinn. I'll never forget your nine episodes, and neither will millions of other people. You touched our lives and you live on in our hearts and through our keyboards. You'll never be forgotten.

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Cordelia Chase smiled brightly at the customer at Wolfram and Hart. She jotted down information and told them she'd get back to them if she found anything. She already knew she would. But not today. It was five and she was off duty. Running her fingers through her short cap of chocolate brown hair, she pulled on her leather jacket and picked up her purse, already yanking her keys out of it.

She poked her head in Angel's office, grinned at him, the same smile she reserved for clients and her parents. "I'm heading home. See you tomorrow?"

"Bright and early. Just like always." Angel barely glanced up from his paperwork. "You all right?"

"Peachy. Night."

"Night. Will you be available for patrol tomorrow?"

"Should be. Unless something comes up."

"All right. I'll mark you down on the schedule."

Cordelia waved over one shoulder as she left the office and breezed down the hall, the embodiment of success in her ivory silk suit, red blouse and red heels. She looked sleek, and professional, not a hair out of place, not one chipped fingernail. And inside, she was crumbling. Just as she always did.

Her life had tossed her around carelessly, left her beaten, broken, more times than she could count. And each time she had built it again, started over, moved past everything. This time, she wasn't so sure she could do that.

Nothing was the same. Angel was so distant. Ever since the Jasmine fiasco and hell on Earth and all that good stuff. Now he owned Wolfram and Hart and Spike was working with them, and Fred was with Wesley, which meant everyone worried about Gunn. And all of it had been her fault. For thinking that she could possibly be in love with Connor. It had been a moment of insanity, one that had nearly ended the world.

She couldn't blame him for wanting to keep his distance. She would have too, in his position. But it hurt desperately to feel so guilty and know there was no way that she could fix it. So she put on a face every day. One that fooled everyone, even herself at times. She seemed fine, perfect, holding together. While inside she was falling apart.

Each night, when she went home, she would sit down in front of her TV, nurse a bottle of wine, or scotch or whiskey, whatever she had handy and play a tape over and over again. And each time, when it got to the line, 'is that it? Am I done? she would begin to cry, asking herself those same questions. Questions to which there were no answers.

Sometimes it became too much and she would drink the whole bottle, masking the pain with drunkenness. Others she wanted it to hurt, wouldn't take a sip for fear of dulling the knife that was embedded in her heart. Always she wished for someone to make it hurt less, for someone to help her get through one more day and one more night. She always made it, but hardly ever was it without thought of ending it all.

There was a gun with one bullet in her bedside table. A bottle full of Valium in her medicine cabinet, a sharp butcher knife under her sink. She always entertained those thoughts, then discarded them, choosing to fight one more day, hoping against hope that it would get better. Rising each morning to realize that things hadn't improved overnight, that they were just as bad as they had been, and that she couldn't make it better. Then she'd try to drown herself in the shower, and when that didn't work, she'd get dressed, put on her face and go to work.

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Cordelia arrived home, felt faint stirrings as Dennis moved throughout the apartment. He was so worried about her, and it pained her to know that she couldn't hide her state from him. She changed quickly, noticing that she'd lost more weight, enough to the point that looking in the mirror at herself was sickening. She was bone thin. She decided on a whim to actually eat dinner.

Dinner was half a pack of chocolate chip cookies and a glass of wine, which she had decided would be her alcohol of the night. She finished the cookies, sat down on the floor in front of the TV, and pushed play on the VCR. The screen was fuzzy at first, then cleared to reveal her hero.

Hair black as coal, shiny, curly. A face drawn taut over great bones. Handsome features in his own way, but the thing that stood out the most were the bright blue eyes, framed by thick lashes and only slightly bushy eyebrows. His frame was thin but not skinny, and he was tall, but not too tall, skimming six foot to her five seven.

His fashion sense was atrocious. The brown leather jacket hideous. No one knew it still resided in her closet. She hadn't taken it out in five years. But it was there and she'd push everything away every once in a while, look at it, then press her face into the soft leather and inhale the smell of him. Aftershave, slightly musky, coffee, tobacco from the bars he'd frequented with slight undertones of alcohol. It was familiar, comforting.

Allen Francis Doyle had died much before his time. And the two sentences she seemed to be living by were forever capture. Just as he was. On a video tape, one she had the only copy of, and one that she would play for forever. 'Is this it? Am I done?'

Oh God, she should have said no. Cordelia burst into tears as those lines were uttered with an Irish brogue, from a face lit with good humor and full of life. Eyes that spoke of promises and safety and adoration. She should have said no. Said that he's just begun. She should have given him a chance. Things could have been different.

If she'd done that one thing differently, maybe she wouldn't be seriously considering killing herself. Maybe she wouldn't feel like if she didn't, she'd die anyway. Maybe life would be worth living. Maybe she'd have had a chance to be happy. Maybe the world wouldn't have almost ended, and Connor would still be a baby, and Jasmine would never have been born. So many things could have been differently.

Cordelia curled into a ball, sobs wracking her emaciated form. She thought of the gun, the pills, the knife and sobbed harder. She hated her life. She felt so helpless, so unable to make things better. Out of options. Hopeless. As she sobbed, Cordelia felt her last licks of hope get extinguished. And that left her feeling empty.

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"Something must be done." The female Oracle said to her brother, regarding him sternly. She was going to put her foot down and he was not going to change her mind.

"It is not our place. She is to deal with her own hardships."

"They are not her hardships, they are ours. We put too many burdens on her. Will we sit and do nothing while one of our greatest assets suffers for something not of her own doing?"

"There is nothing to be done. Perhaps we should not let anything else be put upon her for a time."

"That is not good enough, Brother. We must send her someone."

"Who?"

"The Promised One. The Messenger. The one for which her heart cries out."

"He is dead, and has been for six years. His body is dust."

"A body can be recreated. His soul lives on. And it is needed."

"We cannot know that he will do any good."

"No, but without someone who sees that she is on the verge of death, she will die. And if she takes her own life, she will go to Hell. That cannot happen. She is still needed. And it was not his time to die."

"That is not our concern."

"With or without you, Brother, the Messenger will be brought back. The world needs him. The world needs them both."

"Very well. We will do it. But if this doesn't work, Sister, I am taking none of the blame."

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Doyle found himself in the warehouse where he had died. Except, he wasn't dead. He didn't feel dead, and he didn't feel fried. He was whole, seemingly healthy and inexplicably anxious to go see Cordelia. Without stopping to question why he was back and for how long, he struck out in the direction of her apartment.

The door was unlocked when he arrived, which was weird for Cordelia. He pushed it open, and felt Dennis moving back and forth. The TV was fuzzy, a half drank bottle of wine on the floor beside the couch. Dennis wasn't throwing a fit, so he took it that the ghost knew he was one of the good guys. He heard the shower running and walked toward the bathroom. And saw blood.

His heart sank and his stomach clenched. He ripped back the shower curtain and found Cordelia huddled in one corner, her skin bleeding from where she had scrubbed so hard, both wrists seeping blood. She was pale, seemed to be barely breathing. She'd lost too much blood.

She had tried to kill herself. Doyle grabbed a towel, wrapped it around her shivering form, lifted her from the shower. He cradled her too thin body against his much larger one and swiftly carried her into the bedroom. What had happened to her that could have caused her to do what she had?

Cordelia opened her eyes, and the rich brown of them met the bright blue of his. "Doyle?"

"It's me, Princess. Guess I know why they sent me back now. Do ye need to go to the hospital, darlin'?"

Cordelia shook her head. "I'll be all right. I tried to kill myself." She whispered, curling into him. "I tried to make it all go away. My God, Doyle it all hurts so bad I couldn't take it anymore. Nothing feels good, nothing makes me feel alive."

Doyle rocked her back and forth slowly, his own heart bleeding for her. "Shh, I'm here now, sweetheart. It'll all be okay."

"Make it stop hurting, Doyle. Please, just make it all go away. Make me stop thinking for one night. I feel like I'm already dead."

Doyle held her closer, shocked to the bone. His bright, gorgeous, lively Cordelia had become someone who didn't eat, who drank until she couldn't feel, and who had tried to take her own life because she felt she couldn't face the pain.

"My God, Princess, what's happened to you?"

"Life." Cordelia said weakly, burrowing her head in his chest. "Am I dying? You're dead. This has to be a dream. Or a vision. Are you an angel now Doyle? Like the light at the end of the tunnel?"

"No. I'm real enough. The PTB sent me back. And now I know why, darlin'. You need me. And you aren't going to die. You'll feel awful come morning, but you aren't going to die."

"I don't really want to die. I just want the pain to go away."

"It will. I'm going to help you."

"Doyle?"

"Yes, Princess?"

"I love you."