Fulfilling A Prophecy
Chapter 1: Yesteryears (POV: Cordelia Chase)

by Hollywood Phoenix


Want to post this story? Please email me at: hollywoodphoenix@yahoo.com for permission. Thanks.
Premise: Considers Connor's unwitting leap into the hellish dimension and his subsequent return.
Rating: PG for this chapter, but R for subsequent chapters.

~~*~~*~~ @ ~~*~~*~~


I remember it as if it were yesterday. The glitz of a Hollywood party. The predestined meet. The pain of foresight. The comfort and laughter. The solidification of a family.


A grand hotel, looming majestically against a midnight blue backdrop. Its 'swiveling' double doors, leading to a prophecy ordained; to an unwitting leap into a hellish dimension, followed by endless unanswered questions. And after that, the emptiness that will never be filled; the intense pain.


Yet, I continue to walk along the still very clear path to those doors. I'm pushing past the doors into the lobby, which is dark and dusty and so very quiet. I'm walking across the floor experimentally, listening to the echoes from the clicks of my heels.


When I'm at the counter, I peer over, half expecting a smiling face or some kind of greeting to emerge from the shadows. I peek into the cluttered, but empty office, and can't go in.


Although it's not the real truth, this is where I believe it began.


A tiny black spider lands on my hand and bites me. Feeling the pierce and redness puffing up, I jump, effectively brushing the insect aside. The dust is swirling around me in the air now, and too overwhelmed to breathe deeply, I find myself opening doors leading to the courtyard.


Sunlight is filtering in again. I step outside.


In the warmth of the sun, I am slowly circling around. All around me are unkempt trees and bushes that have turned a dull brown. There are also weeds that were once flowers scattered everywhere; they have long since dried out and lost all their bloom. I find litter along the trail, a little out of place, but fitting right into the setting.


But the worst that I see are the brown vines that are so gnarled and ensnared with each other, I wonder if they can ever be saved.


I no longer want to bask in the sun. I turn back and run.


Back under a cool shield again, I double-check to make sure the courtyard doors are sealed and locked up tight. No fear of anything getting in.


Or out.


Looking back into the dim foyer, I am comforted again. My eyes rest on the once brilliantly red carpet on the stairs, and it beckons to me.


That is when I see the memory of a black covering that has descended. Suffocating. Inescapable.


So I climb up the winding staircase of this long abandoned hotel. And I travel from one locked room to another. As I pause in front of one in particular, I smell the faint wisps of smoke and decay.


It's been 15 years since our sweet baby was taken from us. An innocent caught up in a war that was started long before life breathed in him and borne of a prophecy he could not escape.


A prophecy that had no alternative but to be fulfilled.


It's not so obvious how it was done. Enemies and friends alike thought it would be through the demon brewing within the dark Angel; his threatening hate boiling under the deceivingly congenial surface. No one expected it to be out of his humanity, his unwavering and exhausting love, or the unrelenting hope.


Just as no one expected to see my beautiful infant again.


And we never did. Because Connor, the months-old child, never emerged from the fiery depths of the unknown dimension; it was Connor, the full-grown man. He survived. But he returned broken.


I am still stopped in the same spot in front of the same room. It is the one in which his crib used to be. The one that blew up into smoke and sparked a cataclysmic chain of destruction. After he became attached to me. Before I ever really knew him.


I place a hand on the heavy wooden door. The full-grown man now clings to me. He remembers me. I was his surrogate mother. I welcome him with open arms. And his unheard sobs are reserved for me, as I hold his body closer to mine. I am his savior.


The man. The Hero. My beloved. I shelter him. I protect them. They encompass me. I have learned how I redeem them both.


I charge towards the old room and splinters fly from the unyielding door. As I dig myself in, my hands become bloody and bruised.


Yes, I've changed.


Through picking up the fractured pieces and surviving a series of subtle and gradual transformations, a new being has formed. I look at myself in a pool of water, in a makeshift mirror, to reaffirm what gazes back. So, there is still the same wide hazel eyes I used to flutter to manipulate men to do my bidding, the brown hair I obsessed about, the haughty stature that commanded minions. There is the trademark mouth that can break into a breathtakingly wide and inspiring smile if I try; if I lie. Beneath the faintly lined skin and beyond my hidden insecurities and superficial misconceptions, churns the same sharp mind. Beats the same sheltered heart. Wields the same wealth of power.


A mind that is now dulled through emotions. A heart that is now free for the taking. A power that refuses to die. A blank reflection I barely recognize.


But I'm still the lucky one. At least I can be seen.


The father watches our desperate associations from afar. He's always wished for this, yet I know him. He will never be fully satisfied, as with everything else in his extended afterlife. How did it get so complicated? How did six little words come to have so much impact?


When did it become a battle between father and son?


Because neither can win. For I love the father. And I love the son. While I can have one, I dream and long for the other. In the purest recesses of my mind, I know the truth: I'll always have neither. And they'll never have the real me.


I am in the room and suddenly, I am burying myself in the furthest, most dark-filled corner. One that has no air and will never set me free.


My boy now looks like his father, only older. He's lived as long as me, a lifetime of horror and unimaginable suffering. One that he cannot speak of but believes only I will silence. Thus, from the mouths of hell and back, he has attained the crippling scars that his father brandishes and tried protecting him from.


Except one. It is the critical mark, that is only deepening through time and intense jealousy and unsurpassable, overwhelming guilt.


It can only be this that wounds so accurately. That bonds them together. That divides the father from the son.


That will eternally kill them both.


Which leads to the inevitable conclusion; from now, till the end of this agonizing existence. It is a prophecy being fulfilled.


~~X~~X~~ * ~~X~~X~~


A/N: This is a repost... but it's longer and hopefully better than the last version. I've been obsessing about this possible outcome since the latest depressing ep. of Angel.
Disclaimers: I just write 'em.


(c) March 7, 2002, updated March 16, 2002

Liked this story? Check out my other fanfics at http://www.fanfiction.net/profile.php?userid=169482
Thanks for reading! I'm much obliged for any constructive feedback you can give me.