Title: ANOTHER HERO: Season Two
Summary: A Doyle-centric retelling of the second season of Angel. This is part of my Another Hero series, which begins with an alternate version of "Hero," and is followed by Another Hero: Season One. It isn't absolutely necessary to read those stories in order to read this one, but it is strongly encouraged for maximum enjoyment. I do refer to some things that only happened in my version of events.
A/N: If you've read my Season One rewrite, then you know the drill. The chapters are labeled by the episode they correspond with and I aim to match the theme and general feeling of the actual show. Which is why I feel like a slight disclaimer needs to be made here... just as the show became darker and more serialized during Season Two, so will this story. In some cases, I'll merely make passing references to the "case of the week" for timeline purposes, but the arc of this story is one that extends from beginning to end, with a lot of ups and downs in between. I guess what I'm saying is, you aren't going to want to skip around too much with this one. Everything is important, everything happens for a reason. Also, hang on to your hats, this here is going to be an emotional rollercoaster! It'll make you laugh, it'll make you cry, hopefully it won't make you throw your computer/tablet against any hard surfaces.
But you trust me, right? You should definitely trust me. Enjoy the ride, my friends. ;)
"Judgment," Part I
"No! I love you. This can't be over!" Cordelia shrieked, reaching out to the dark-haired man standing across from her, placing her hand on his shoulder to emphasize her desperate words.
With barely a hint of emotion, he replied. "It is over. And now it's time to move on."
"But, I gave you everything!" She cried. "You're everything to me. I'm nothing without you, baby."
A pair of cold, unfeeling eyes met Cordelia's heartfelt plea and inspiration hit her. Or rather, it hit him—SMACK!
"Ow! Hey… ow… she hit me." Cordelia's scene-partner stumbled backward, lifting his hand to his rapidly-reddening cheek, he held up the script in his other hand. "Where does it say that in the script?"
"I threw that in myself." Cordelia explained with a mildly apologetic smile, turning to face the acting-coach who had been sitting quietly observing the two of them while they worked. "This Eleanor chick seems so spineless. Begging this worthless jerk not to dump her. I don't get it. I'd totally be the dumpee in this scenario—not that I would've dated this loser in the first place. Not an ounce of substance to be found here, y'know what I mean?"
"Alright, Cordelia, that's good. Very good. You should tap into the part of yourself that can empathize with Eleanor, but it's important to remember, she is not you. She is trying to stop Johnny from breaking up with her."
"And she doesn't slap him!" Bruce, her disgruntled scene partner, protested.
"Right. I can try it again. No slapping this time." Cordelia promised, holding her hand up in the universal sign for vow-making.
"Use that conflict." The acting coach instructed, doing a little hand motion for emphasis. "From the top."
Beep. Beep. Beep.
"Oh, sorry. One sec." Cordelia said, scrambling for her beeper in order to silence it. An address flashed across the face of the small electronic device, along with the telltale "D" which served as the sender's signature. As if that was necessary. She silenced the annoying beeping, shoved the pager back in her pocket and turned back to her scene partner. "Okay, ready now."
Bruce gave her a weary look as he lifted his script and started reading from the top of the page. "Face it, Eleanor. We're through."
"I don't believe you." Cordelia replied, fumbling to find her place on the page and ignoring the tiny voice in the back of her head that told her she should be going to her car instead of continuing on with her acting class. Funny enough, the voice seemed to have an Irish accent. "Don't do this, uh..."
Beep. Beep. Beep.
"Doyle." Cordelia grumbled as her beeper went off for a second time.
"Johnny." Bruce corrected, more than a little irritated by yet another interruption. "Can't you turn that thing off?"
She didn't bother apologizing this time, once again yanking the device out of her pocket and staring at the small screen. This time it simply said "911." She sighed heavily, hesitating another long moment before silencing the gadget and shoving it back into her pocket once again. It was always 911.
"Are you ready now?" Bruce wondered, with a put upon expression. As she stared at the actor across from her, who was as generically attractive as humanly possible and couldn't act his way out of a paper bag, she made her decision.
"Actually… I have to go." She stated unapologetically. She turned to address the acting coach as she walked across the stage to exit. "We can pick it up from there next time, right?"
The acting coach never had a chance to answer, as Cordelia had already grabbed her purse, shoved her script inside and slipped out the stage door, which exited straight into the parking lot where her car waited. "If this isn't a 911, it's gonna become one, Doyle." She mumbled under her breath as she wrenched open her driver-side door and plunked herself into her car.
Little more than twenty minutes later she pulled up to the front of the Hollywood Gold's Gym, tires screeching as she came to an abrupt stop. She hopped out of the car and tossed the valet her keys, as she proceeded to the badly dressed individual pacing impatiently on the front steps.
"What took ya so long?" Doyle wondered, yanking the front door open for her as she reached the top landing.
"Are you kidding me? Twenty minutes from Westwood to East Hollywood at this hour? That's practically unheard of." She sassed, walking ahead of him into the well air-conditioned lobby of the gym. "Did you forget I had my acting class this afternoon?"
"I didn't forget." Doyle replied, falling into synchronized step beside her. "How'd it go? All that rehearsing we did help?"
"It was going great until I was so rudely interrupted by your pages." She huffed, as they ignored the man behind the counter waving for them to stop walking. They continued straight ahead, beyond the double-glass doors that led to the main workout space. "I was really digging deep into some highly emotional stuff. Really becoming Eleanor… oh, who am I kidding? That chick's a total wimp, and I'm glad I had an excuse to get the hell out of her pathetic, and undoubtedly frumpy, shoes… So, this is the praetorian sacrifice thing, right?"
Doyle was chuckling at her commentary, as they stormed through the glass doors and found Angel standing before a wall of mirrors. Not one of them bore his reflection. Wesley stood several feet behind him, a large bag of weapons at his feet.
"Just in time." Angel noted, right before he kicked in the wall of mirrors, revealing a horrific tableau hidden behind the crumbling shards of glass. Two defenseless humans were bound and gagged in the center of the secret room, while a menacing red-robed figure stood by, waiting for a large demon to plunge his sword into the sacrifices.
"This is the part where I tell you to stop." Angel announced, as he proceeded to morph into his vamp face. The red-robed figure fearlessly, and foolishly, charged, essentially landing right on Angel's fist and knocking himself to the floor. "Followed closely by the part where I kick your ass."
"I love it when he gets sassy with 'em. I think he gets that from you." Doyle remarked to Cordelia, before snatching a weapon from Wesley's bag and leaping into action behind Angel. Wesley did the same, while Cordelia turned to the crowd of gawking gym-goers, flashing them a reassuring smile. "Nothing to see here folks. Just another reason not to do steroids."
The smell of fresh coffee and buttery deliciousness wafted down the hallway, rousing Cordelia from the warm cocoon of her bed. Grabbing her robe, she padded sleepily down the hall and found the creator of the heavenly aromas hard at work in her kitchen. Over the many months since they'd first started dating, she'd discovered that Doyle had a number of hidden talents. His ability to create not only edible, but genuinely tasty, meals in her kitchen, being one of them. A remnant of his years spent pitching in at soup kitchens and homeless shelters, he was nowhere close to being a gourmet chef, but he was far more domestically capable than Cordelia herself. He hardly burned anything.
Breakfast was his specialty—even better than Angel's, which made sense, since Doyle could actually taste food properly. Throughout the summer, Cordelia had become accustomed to feasting on plates full of fluffy eggs and crispy bacon, or loaves of cinnamon-infused French toast, or mountains of buttermilk pancakes, all served at the first light of dawn, regardless of whether any sleep had yet to come. This morning, thankfully, the pancakes were coming after a nearly full night of much-needed rest, which meant she'd enjoy them all the more.
Especially, since they would be enjoying them alone.
"Good morning." She said to the back of Doyle's head, which was firmly focused on scooping pancakes off the hot griddle before they went from pleasantly crisp to unpleasantly charred.
"'Mornin' Princess." He replied cheerily, giving her a lightning quick flash of his dimple. "Hope you're hungry."
Watching him hard at work over her stove always made her hungry… perhaps, not exactly the way he intended, however. It was little moments such as this that Cordelia almost had to pinch herself. She'd gotten really lucky in the love department, and she was supremely glad she hadn't missed out on the right thing during her quest for all the wrong ones.
"It was a long night of demon killing and dismemberment." She reminded with faux-enthusiasm, plopping herself into one of the dining room chairs. "I'm starved."
Within moments, a steaming hot cup of coffee was set before her, followed by a smiling plate full of pancakes. Literally, smiling—Doyle had skillfully shaped the pancake batter into a smiley face, which, in turn, made her smile down at the face on her plate. "I love it when you do that."
"I know." He replied, with a wink. "That's why I keep doing it."
"Syrup?" She asked, batting her eyelashes up at him cutely.
The grin didn't leave his face as he disappeared into the kitchen, returning with the maple syrup, which he placed down on the table beside her. "Anything else I can getcha, Princess?"
She raised a finger to the side of her mouth in a thoughtful pose. "Hmmm, maybe one more thing…" She teased, before using her finger to tap the center of her lips. She then pursed them, waiting for him to fulfill her final morning request. He gladly leaned down and gave her a sweet good morning kiss. Her response was whispered as if it was a secret. "I love it when you do that, too."
"That's why I keep doing it." He grinned down at her, slinking back to the kitchen to retrieve his own breakfast.
Cordelia wasted no time digging into the hot meal set before her. Sure, it was loaded with sugar, fat and carbs, which would probably go straight to her thighs. But, she had been to the gym the night before… technically. Not to mention, lugging around heavy weapons and burying demon carcasses was a great way to stay in shape. And, if that wasn't enough, she was almost positive they'd be doing it again that evening, and the next one as well. There'd hardly been a night in recent memory when they weren't running after some big, bad, evil thing. The good fight did a body good.
Assuming the body didn't get bruised, beaten, bitten, burned, impaled, mutilated or, of course, destroyed completely. All of which were possibilities in their line of work.
Gone were the days when she and Doyle would sit around the claustrophobic Angel Investigations office, listening to the sound of an empty answering machine and flirting shamelessly in order to pass the time between cases. For one thing, the office had been blown to hell, for another, they had more cases than they knew what to do with. Nowadays, finding time to flirt was a luxury, while they worked out of Cordelia's even-more-claustrophobic apartment. Haven't the Powers That Be ever heard of summer vacation?!
Actually, she couldn't blame their workaholic summer on the Powers themselves. Less than half of the their cases were vision-related these days, which was still more than the paying cases. No, the majority of the cases were of their own making—of Angel's making, to be exact. The man was on a mission, that was for sure. The promise of actual humanity could do that to a person—er, vampire. Still, some people already happened to be human, or half-human, at the very least. And those people could use a little R&R.
"Can't we skip work today and do something fun instead?" Cordelia wondered, as Doyle reentered the room, placing his pancake-filled plate on the table across from hers. "Remember fun? It was that thing we used to have before we became slaves to the Shanshu scoreboard." She idly gestured to the whiteboard taking up space in her living room. "It's been a long beachless summer, Doyle. My complexion is nearly as ghastly as yours these days."
She could see the smile play on Doyle's lips from behind the coffee mug he had raised to his mouth. "I'll talk to Angel."
"Where have I heard that one before?" She said skeptically, as she stabbed one of the pancake eyeballs off her plate, along with the blueberry that made up its iris. "It's impossible to play hooky when work comes to us."
As if on cue, a knock at the front door signaled the end of their private time together for the remainder of the day and probably most of the evening as well. Dennis knew the drill by now, opening the door to allow entrance to the most English member of the Angel Investigations team.
"Good morning!" Wesley greeted them in his typical enthusiastic fashion. "I found the most fascinating text on Sloth demons last night. I really think you—Oh, pancakes?!"
Doyle had already gotten up from the table, well before Wesley made it completely into the dining room to see the breakfast plates. Wesley placed the book he was carrying aside, and eagerly took a seat at the table. Doyle returned with a plate already made in anticipation of their co-worker's arrival. He plopped it in front of their guest, and went back to the kitchen to grab the coffee urn.
"Please pass the syrup?" Wesley requested, rubbing his hands together excitedly, before picking up his fork. He finally took a long look down at the plate in front of him. "Is it me, or do these pancakes look rather grumpy?"
Doyle sat on the couch with his feet up on the coffee table, shuffling a deck of cards and half-watching as Cordelia paced frenetically across her living room carpet. She had spent the better part of the last half hour subtly airing her grievances about the status of Angel Investigations' current headquarters, aka, her apartment. This wasn't exactly stop-the-presses material, considering it happened quite regularly. She didn't go so far as to demand that they get out, so much as suggest it constantly. Not that Doyle could blame her. Fighting the good fight was one thing, having your entire life—and private space—consumed by it, was another.
"Don't you think you'd become a real boy that much sooner if we had a real office again?" Cordelia was pleading in Angel's general direction. "Plus, aren't you tired of staying in Doyle's crappy little apartment? There's only so much a few air fresheners can do to improve years of stink. And, you, with the super-senses. I'm thinking that's gotta be pretty unpleasant."
"Hey." Doyle objected, pausing his card shuffling. "My place doesn't smell that bad."
"Thanks to me, it doesn't." Cordelia fired back. "Nowadays it's nearly pine forest fresh… Assuming that pine forest has been burned to ash and is still smoldering."
As per usual, Wesley's head was buried in a book and Angel's was buried in the floorboards, as he leaned against the mantle over Cordelia's fireplace. Somewhere in the middle of all that Dennis, was attempting to tidy up the place, which only succeeded in unnerving Wesley when the book he'd been about to pick up, suddenly floated out of reach.
"I'm working on a new office." Angel claimed, as he had done for most of the summer, without ever actually seeming like he was, in fact, doing anything of the sort. He was far too busy chasing down demons that would otherwise have never been on their radar. Doyle had tried, on more than one occasion, to gently apply some pressure to the breaks—the war against evil didn't have to be waged in one summer, after all. Then again, he'd been the one insisting there was a finish line out there in the first place, and knowing it was there, changed the game, not only for Angel, but for Doyle as well. Cordelia and Wesley didn't have much of a choice but to play by the new rules, to varying degrees of enthusiasm.
"It's bad enough I don't have time for anything remotely social anymore that doesn't involve the three of you and some angry hell-beast." She continued her unending lament. "But, I can't even veg out on my sofa with a carton of nonfat fro-yo, because you never leave."
"You should go ahead. Eat your, um… fro-yo." Angel tried to sound something resembling sympathetic.
"Actually, I'm pretty sure Wesley ate it all." Doyle piped up from his place on the couch, having gone back to his idle shuffling. He could barely stifle a snicker. Jokes at the Brit's expense were his only form of entertainment these days, so he had to make them count.
Wesley raised his head from his book, and turned a pair of contrite eyes on Cordelia. "I've been meaning to replace it."
Cordelia only glared in response, while Angel tried desperately to segue back to the other matter they were supposed to be discussing. "Are you sure that thing we killed last night was the Carnyss?"
"Oh yes, quite sure." Wesley confirmed ardently. "Which leaves us at square one with the elusive Khee demon… unfortunately, all research on the Khee population tends to point toward their rather impressive talent for camouflage."
"L.A. isn't exactly the Amazon rainforest." Doyle pointed out. "Unless it's figured out how to camouflage itself as a very slimy school bus, someone's bound to notice a demon o' that size in the naked city."
Angel sighed with muted frustration and craned his neck in Doyle's direction. "Do you think you can check in with some of your old contacts?" He wondered. "Get a beat on this thing."
Doyle had barely had a chance to even consider answering for himself, when Cordelia side-stepped into the space between the two best friends. "Oh no. Hold it right there. I thought we all agreed after what happened last time, that Doyle's contacts were off limits."
They hadn't actually agreed on anything of the sort, but it had been heavily implied after the "last time." As much as Doyle had always liked being the go-to guy for the word on the street, he wasn't exactly eager to stick his nose where it wasn't wanted—and it wasn't wanted anywhere these days. It had become readily apparent, through violence mostly, that Doyle was now persona non grata amongst the strange bedfellows he'd once kept. His last fact-finding mission had resulted in duel black eyes, a sprained ankle and a displaced shoulder—injuries that had taken a while to heal, seeing how he'd acquired them while he was human. And what he hadn't told Cordelia, was that the sprained ankle was of his own doing—had he not clumsily jumped to safety when he'd had the chance, he would have likely added "crushed skull" to his list of ailments.
"Cordelia, we have no other options." Angel debated calmly. "We can't just let that thing roam around the city, doing whatever it wants."
"Why not?" She argued in return. "It's not like it killed anyone."
"Yet." Angel added. "It hasn't killed anyone yet… and I'd really like to make sure it never has the chance."
"I do know a place where we can get info without the threat o' violence." Doyle mentioned offhandedly from his place on the couch, hoping to diffuse the mounting tension between his best friend and his girlfriend. He packed the deck of cards together tightly and plopped them down on the coffee table. "It's completely safe. In fact, we could all go, make it a social occasion…"
If Cordelia had heard what Doyle said, she didn't bother to respond. Instead she had turned her eyes toward the rug below her feet and abruptly shouted, "Ugh! You have got to be kidding me!" She squatted down and began rubbing at the spot she'd just noticed. "Okay, which one of you tracked demon blood on the carpet?"
She stared at each one of the occupants of the room accusingly. When she got to Doyle, he raised a finger, signaling that something was about to happen, which she naturally assumed was a vision. The change in her demeanor was instantaneous—her features softened as she instinctively jumped up to move closer to him, the stain on the carpet becoming a distant memory.
"Aaaachoooo!" Doyle sneezed, causing Cordelia to reflexively step back, as his face morphed into its demon visage, spikes and all.
"Gesundheit." Wesley said from across the room, dropping his head back into the open book in his lap.
Doyle shook off his demon face, and rubbed his itchy nose, narrowing his eyes at the incriminating incense that was now burning on the end table beside him. "Dennis, man. What've I told ya 'bout the incense?"
Cordelia quickly moved forward, stubbed out the burning incense and fanned away the sweet smelling smoke. "He means well, Doyle. Just trying to cover up the stench of musty old books and sweaty males."
"I don't sweat." Angel responded, earning himself a begrudging look from Doyle. Sure, rub it in that vampires have almost no scent, while Brachens have a fairly specific one, easy to detect by most other demon breeds and certain humans, specifically those named Cordelia Chase. Although, Doyle supposed it wasn't actually the demon smell she complained about, but rather the stale cigarette smoke and sickeningly sweet smell of spilled alcohol that occasionally clung to the fabric of his clothes.
As Cordelia worked to remove the sneeze-inducing incense from the room, Doyle raised his hand once again as a different type of warning bell went off in his head. His body jerked forward as the intense stream of pain and accompanying images fired through his neurons, causing him to lose all sense of the world around him. All he could do was hope that he didn't land headfirst into any pointy objects, while his brain got repeatedly bludgeoned by an unseen force from above.
Once the chaos of his vision receded, Doyle found himself leaning halfway off the couch, with Cordelia's arms securely wrapped around him, ensuring that he hadn't crashed forward into the coffee table. As his muscles relaxed and he slowly sat back on the couch cushions, her grip didn't loosen. She held him close, and raised a hand to his head to gently massage some of the pressure away. Angel had moved closer to Doyle's side as well, but his services weren't needed. Cordelia had things under control; no matter what else she was doing when a vision hit, she made it her mission to be at Doyle's side. She saw the toll they took on him, and she knew she could offer Doyle far more comfort than anyone else in the room. The kind of comfort he needed after having a parade of agony and terror march through his head at top volume. Although, in this particular instance, he didn't sense much in the way of terror.
"What did you see?" Angel asked gently, as Doyle acclimated his nervous system to reality.
"Nasty looking demon. Didn't recognize the breed." Doyle explained, lifting his own hand to massage his temple, as Cordelia retracted her own. "But before ya go out there all guns-a-blazing, I got the distinct impression it needs our help…"