CHAPTER 10

Angel went to check on Wesley every night. He spent most of his time aside from that watching over Cordelia's apartment from a warehouse across the street that (thankfully) had sewer access in its basement. He hadn't been sleeping much, understandably, and used the extra time to search the books he'd brought from Wesley's apartment for the symbols he'd seen on Doyle's chest.

The first week was difficult; all that time alone provided no distraction from replaying the night over and over in his head. He kept seeing that grin – that satisfied, evil grin on Doyle's face as he'd turned Cordelia against him. The look in his eyes that told Angel there was nothing of his friend inside that body aside from memories being used for manipulation.

He hated that the way he was feeling in that moment, alone and hurting but forced to go on was exactly what Buffy had gone through when he'd turned Angelus on her.

Alright, no, not exactly – for him it was a friend (albeit one of the only two real friends he'd had in over two hundred years of existence) that he was dealing with the possibility of having to kill, for her it had been the love of her life. It was still excruciating to contemplate and he didn't have a Scooby-gang around to distract him from his brooding. He wanted to call her, to tell her he was sorry for everything that had happened between them but it would be selfish. He would just be dragging her back down a well of pain she'd finally managed to climb out of in the hopes that he might feel better if he had someone to commiserate with. He managed to avoid finding a way to hear her voice; at least until she'd called his cell phone.

Apparently Cordelia hadn't been kidding when she said his invitation was revoked; she'd contacted Willow for the spell to make it official. Needless to say her request had raised some eyebrows back in Sunnydale. Buffy called to ask what had happened, pretending to be concerned with his and Cordelia's problem but he knew the truth – even after Cordy had dismissed the concern she had wanted to hear for herself that it wasn't due to him changing back to Angelus. Their conversation was kept short; the words were cold and reminded them both of how far apart they'd grown. It made his pain worse instead of providing any comfort.

Thankfully Cordelia kept her curtains open to her front window or he didn't know what he would have done, he knew that when she walked by it every so often or sat reading in front of it on the sofa that it was deliberate. It grieved him to realize it wasn't for his peace of mind, it was because she wanted to show Doyle, if he was somewhere close by watching, that she was alone.

So there he sat in a cold warehouse while the only two friends he had in the world hated him for different reasons. That's right, as time wore on even he began to see this evil incarnation of Doyle as his lost friend. He couldn't tell himself, 'no, that's not him. Doyle is, as Cordelia said, in heaven or wherever it is the good guys go when they die.' It wasn't working to ease the pain anymore. What if he really was inside that body somehow? What if there was a way to save him from what Wolfram & Hart had done to him? He had been too afraid to hope in the beginning, had steeled himself against the weakness it would cause and focused on keeping Cordelia safe. He'd prepared himself mentally for the likelihood that he would have to kill Doyle.

God even thinking those two words together in a sentence sapped him of his resolve.

Wesley was released from the hospital a week after his little run in with Doyle and the pipe, he was still in too much pain to walk around but at least he could breathe without blinding agony. Despite the attack he was willing to help Angel in his research, though Angel wondered if it was driven by the hope that he'd find a spell to kill the man who'd put him in Intensive Care.

It took some serious convincing for Cordelia to put the books Wesley had left at her apartment out in her hallway for Angel to pick them up, her condition was that she wouldn't have to see him or speak to him when he came. She'd called Wesley a few days later to say she'd had a vision but wouldn't give it to Angel directly; she relayed it to Wesley over the phone and informed him that from that point forward she'd be doing it in the same manner.

Grudgingly Angel had to resort to watching the news to find out what Doyle had been up to on any given day, if the visions were sharing the information with Cordelia she definitely wasn't passing it along. It seemed even though he was evil he still liked to go to the track, or at least he had until something set him off. The smoldering ruins were broadcast from a helicopter camera as it hovered over the scene, zooming to show viewers that the horses had been saved – the same couldn't be said of nearly a hundred spectators. Every time a report came of a particularly brutal murder or an unexpected natural disaster that toppled a building Angel's stomach would tense at the probability that Doyle had been the cause, guilt settling over him that he should have tried to kill him in the warehouse that night. It was only slightly comforting that he knew he wouldn't have stood a chance.

He was now the only part of the original Angel Investigations that remained. Cordelia, Doyle, and hell even the office was gone now. It made his efforts to 'help the hopeless' feel empty and pointless; when he responded to Cordelia's hand-me-down visions it was cut and dry – kill slime demon, get rid of slime demon's remains and leave. He had never appreciated quite so deeply that without Doyle and Cordelia he'd be nothing, that if they'd never given him their support and friendship he'd still be sitting in the darkness, killing vamps without looking twice at their victims. After Doyle died it had been Cordy that had kept him going, she'd made sure to honor his memory by keeping Angel in the game.

But now there was nothing; no reason to fight, no small measure of comfort in his miserable existence to make the struggle tolerable. The instant he caught himself considering ignoring the visions, abandoning the Powers as punishment for them allowing Doyle to die in the first place it felt like the wind had been knocked out of him. He was playing right into this, he realized. The latest torture from Wolfram & Hart was proving to be incredibly effective.

His and Wesley's search for the meaning of the tattoos on Doyle's flesh was stepped up considerably after that, books were shipped in from all over the world, favors were called in at every turn.

It was four weeks after Doyle's return when a knock on Wesley's apartment door led to the discovery that the law firm from hell's plan to drive a wedge between Cordelia and Angel had taken an unexpected turn. He'd been sitting at the dining room table, pouring over a book that had just arrived from the West Indies and barely looked up as Wesley went to answer the door, he knew whoever was knocking was human and didn't see the need to get up.

"Cordelia! Well…what a pleasant surprise." Wesley stammered and Angel almost fell off his chair in his rush to get out to the living room. He slid to a halt when he came around the corner, letting his posture change to something he hoped would pass for casual.

Sure enough there she stood, her face filled with concern and eyes locked on Angel's. "Hi…listen, I umm…I need to talk to you." She said softly.

"Of course – come in, come in." Wesley said nervously, motioning for her to take a seat as Angel struggled to read the emotion in her face. Was it uncertainty? Fear?

"I'm…" She started once she was sitting on the couch, staring up into Angel's eyes only to falter and look down at her hands for a moment. "God…" She breathed, closing her eyes and wondering how such a tiny, two worded sentence could be so difficult to say.

"What is it?" Angel asked in a voice so soft he barely recognized it as his own, unable to mask his concern as he sat down on the coffee table in front of her.

She reached out and took his hand in hers; taking a deep breath to steady herself before scrunching up her face and blurting out, "I'm pregnant."

Angel's jaw nearly dislocated it fell open so quickly.

"Good Lord…" breathed Wesley, ever slow on the uptake he stared at them in a mix of shock and revulsion. "You mean to say…that the two of you…?" He stammered.

Cordelia and Angel both spun to face him, quickly answering in indignant unison, "No!"

With a sigh and appreciative smile as Angel gave her hand a squeeze of support she continued. "I wasn't feeling right and already had an appointment for my yearly checkup; I mentioned that I was tired and queasy so they ran a blood panel just as standard procedure and…surprise!" She said, giving him an overwhelmed smile. She sat up straight as Angel reached out and laid a hand on her stomach.

"Well if not Angel, then who is the father?" Wesley asked before answering himself with an, "Ooohh…." followed up with the standard, "Good heavens…" as the weight of the situation finally dawned on him.

"Nice to see you're all caught up, chief. Glad you could join us." Cordelia said and shook her head. "We need to find him." She said softly, her soulful brown eyes burning into Angel's. "We need to fix him…I'm not raising a baby alone."

"Two." Angel said in barely a whisper and watched her brow arch.

"Excuse me?" She breathed, blinking repeatedly. After a second she gave a hopefully dismissive laugh and wave. "I'm sorry; I'm still a little out of it – there for a second I thought you said 'two'."

Angel swallowed hard and winced. "I did."

"Well two what? Two fixes? Because I know for damned sure you weren't referring to two…" Cordelia said in a shrill tone of steadily raising panic, her grip on his hands becoming nearly painful.

"There are two heartbeats, Cordy." Angel said, flinching as her fingernails dug into his palm.

"Uh-huh, right." Cordelia said with wide eyes, her voice a few octaves too high as she nodded. "Me and baby-on-board makes two. Two heartbeats. You just forgot to include mine since you don't have one, right? Easy mistake, I forgive you."

"I hate to be the fly in the ointment here, but there is no fetal heartbeat yet, Angel. There won't be until at least the fifth week of gestation and even then it would barely be perceptible even with the most advanced…" Wesley began but Angel shook his head.

"And in an average human pregnancy, you'd be right." Angel said as he stared at Wesley intensely. "But this isn't an average human pregnancy. Trust me; my senses are more reliable than any machine you're going to find in a hospital. These babies are quarter demon…" He raised his voice to talk over Wesley and Cordelia as they both tried to argue their points. "And yes, I said 'babies', just like before I said 'two'. Meaning exactly what it sounds like, there are two babies."

Thankfully Cordelia was already on the couch because she very promptly fainted.

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