"Happy Anniversary," Part II

Wesley and Gunn stood in the center of the small office, which was now much cleaner than it had been when they'd started—or, somewhat cleaner anyway. Things were certainly looking up for The _ Agency, formerly Angel Investigations.

They even had a dial tone and everything.

Cordelia sat behind the desk, putting the final touches on their brand new answering machine message. Beeeep.

"Okay, that's done." Cordelia announced, checking off a little box on the notepad she had set before her. "Next item of business—new business cards. Which means a new logo to go with our new name. Which means… Let's just skip ahead to the next next item, shall we?" She had written herself an itemized list of new business must-do's and, whether they had a name or not, she wasn't letting anything slow her down, not even—

"Cordelia, might we have a word?" Wesley requested, from his place in the center of the room. "Gunn and I… ahem. We have something we would like to discuss. With you."

"Uh… yeah, we do." Gunn awkwardly agreed, giving Wesley an extreme side-eye. "But I'm thinking English should start."

Cordelia's eyes bounced from one of the men standing before her to the other, as they played an unusual game of verbal hot potato, which would be amusing if it wasn't so annoying. "Any day now, Wesley." She remarked impatiently.

"Right, I will start… by telling you what a wonderful job you've done with the new office." Wesley enthused, clapping his hands together and wearing a dopey grin. "Sincerely."

"Thanks?" She said questioningly, knowing without a doubt that wasn't, in fact, what Wesley wanted to be discussing with her. She turned back to Gunn with an arched brow. "Your turn."

"Yeah, alright." Gunn began, clearly unenthused to be put on the spot. "Thing is—we've both noticed you've been losing your lunch a lot lately… and breakfast, and dinner. Probably all the snacks in between, too."

"Um, what Gunn is trying to say…" Wesley jumped back in, giving Gunn a horrified look with his rather tactless presentation of the fairly delicate subject. Cordelia herself was the reigning champ when it came to thoughtless comments, but Gunn did seem to give her a run for her money from time to time. "We're concerned that... well, perhaps, maybe, you should consider the possibility that—"

"I'm pregnant."

"Well, um, yes… that would be, ahem… something to consider." Wesley stammered weakly, in response to her blunt admission of the topic he'd been dancing around for the last several minutes.

Cordelia rolled her eyes as she pushed out her chair and stood up from behind the desk. "Oh, I'm way past considering. Past the peeing on a little plastic stick, too." She declared, as she shared her personal epiphany with her friends. "And now I'm all-the-way to the positively-pink-plus-sign that says I'm knocked up—two demon pregnancies in two years. Must be some kind of a record!"

"Demon pregnancy?!" Wesley echoed with dismay, and then recovered slightly as he remembered which demon she was referring to. "You are talking about Doyle, right?"

"Hold up. Two?" Gunn questioned, looking first at Cordelia and then at Wesley in mild horror.

"Yes, Doyle! Of course, it's Doyle's." Cordelia huffed, throwing her hands up in the air in dramatic fashion and beginning to pace behind the desk. "How many other demons do you think I've let into my bed? None—the answer is none! I'm not some kind of demon groupie, y'know!" She whirled toward Gunn waving a warning finger. "That Haxil Demon was never actually in my bed!"

Gunn held up his hands in surrender, having not the slightest clue what she was talking about. "Whoa...it's cool. I'm not judging." He turned to Wesley, gesturing to the anxious woman cutting a line in the carpet. "Yo, you wanna soothe the savage pregnant chick here?"

"Cordelia?" Wesley's relatively calm voice cut in, as he stepped in front of his now backpedaling counterpart. "I think you should sit down and—"

"I'm pregnant, Wesley, not an invalid!" She snapped back at him, but then promptly stopped pacing. She then yanked the desk chair back out, plopped into it with a heavy sigh and dropped her head into her hands. "What am I gonna do?"

She kept her face buried in her hands, but she didn't have to look up at the two men in the room to see them sharing another one of their now patented looks of concern.

Wesley's voice was thick with compassion as he spoke up once again "Do you plan to tell Doyle?" He asked cautiously. "That would probably be a good start…"

Her shoulders gently shuddered, indicating that she'd begun to cry beneath the cover of her hands. Seeing her distress, Gunn stepped up a little braver than before. "Listen, girl, you don't wanna tell him, then don't—me and English, we got your back." He said encouragingly. "You need a ride to a clinic or something—you got it. Or, y'know, we get one of those little cradle things, stick it in the corner. Trade off on babysitting between cases. It could work."

That caused her to lift her head, revealing her tear-streaked cheeks. And although she was still visibly weeping, a small smile played across her lips. "That's really nice of you to say." She sniffled, wiping away a few stray tears. "But… I think I should tell him. And I want to. I do. It's just…" She gratefully accepted the handkerchief Wesley now held out in offering. "I don't want to get back together with him just because of this."

She blew her nose loudly into the white cloth, and slumped against the surface of the desk, leaning heavily on her elbows.

"Unless I have grossly misinterpreted the subtext… you're saying you do wish to get back together with Doyle." Wesley interpreted. "Is that correct?"

Wiping the last of her tears away with her sleeve, she nodded. "Of course, I wanna get back together with him." She confessed, finally giving voice to what her heart had been telling her every day since they'd been apart. "He's a good person. As loyal as they come—that's one of the reasons why I fell in love with him in the first place. I don't want him to change. I just… felt left out, I guess. Because he chose to be more loyal to Angel than to me."

"Yes, I can see why you'd feel that way." Wesley agreed, with an encouraging smile. "But I do think you're right—Doyle hasn't changed. He's still the man you love."

"And that's gotta make it a little bit easier, right?" Gunn noted. "Doyle's a standup guy. He'd do the right thing even if he wasn't crazy in love with you—which he is, by the way."

"I know." Cordelia agreed, thinking back to how Doyle had been there for her even before they were dating, when she was pregnant with some other demon's baby. There was no question he'd do the right thing now. And he wouldn't just do it because it was the right thing; he'd do it because he loved her. She was sure of that.

More importantly, she wanted him to do it, because she still loved him, too.

"The world's gonna end tomorrow night, which may put a damper on your plans to take down Wolfram & Hart."

Angel squinted at the half-demon now occupying the doorway of his apartment. Doyle was leaning there, arms folded, his general demeanor not exactly matching the seriousness of his words. Surely, no one had ever been this good-humored while discussing Armageddon.

"You had a vision?" Angel asked, mustering up the slightest twinge of concern.

Doyle shifted his weight and gestured into the apartment with a questioning arch of his brow, requesting entrance. Angel said nothing. Did nothing. And yet Doyle took the silence as proper invitation, sauntering into the apartment and shoving his hands deep into his pockets as he did so. "Wasn't exactly mine, but it was a vision." He kept walking until he'd made it to the center of the room, and then turned back to face Angel. "I was having a chat with the Host over at Caritas when all o' the sudden he hits the deck. Knocked out cold."

"How many Sea Breezes did he have before that happened?" Angel snarked, reluctantly shutting the front door and meandering over to where Doyle was now loitering.

"That's the same question I asked at first." Doyle explained. "Which is why I wasn't paying much attention to the dweeb who was assaulting my eardrums at that particular moment. An unfortunate thing, 'cause when the Host came to, he was pretty adamant 'bout the guy bringing about the apocalypse."

"Tomorrow night?" Angel clarified. "Why come to me?"

Doyle rolled his eyes and removed his hands from his pockets, opening them wide in bewilderment. "Why? Ya got other plans? 'Cause I'm thinking you should change 'em."

Angel shrugged, folding his arms over his chest. "What exactly did the Host say was going to happen? What did he see?"

"Nothing!" Doyle exclaimed. "Everything stopped—like time itself will cease to exist after ten o'clock tomorrow."

"Hmmppphh." Angel made a thoughtful exclamation, but didn't say much else.

"Ah, I shoulda known the obliteration of existence as we know it wouldn't impress ya. What's that compared to a trite revenge campaign against an evil law firm, yeah?" Doyle remarked dryly, receiving a dark glare in return. "Ya can't even fake it just a little, man? I get that you're in the darkest of dark places right now, but the rest of us—including those lawyers, you're so obsessed with—still live in the world. It'd be nice if ya cared enough to keep it around."

"I don't care." Angel confirmed. "Why should I care, huh? I'm never gonna be able to atone for centuries of unthinkable evil. Nothing I do will ever be enough."

"Not to turn this into a pot versus kettle sorta thing… but that defeatist attitude won't get ya anywhere." Doyle quipped. "And saving the world's a good start on the road to redemption."

Angel paced several steps away from Doyle before returning to his original position, ignoring the other man's interjection. "Darla—she had a chance. A real chance, and it was taken from her. Just like that." He reminded Doyle. "Now I have to hunt her down and kill her. And then I have to burn Wolfram & Hart to the ground. No one else seems to get that—not the others, which is why they aren't here anymore. And not you, which is why I don't know why you still are!"

Doyle stood stock still letting Angel's minor explosion blow over him. He paused only long enough to give the vampire across from him a disheartened once over. "Are ya done?" Doyle asked through narrowed eyes. "'Cause if you are, let me remind ya why I'm still here. It's 'cause whatever sliver of humanity I've still got is the only one you've still got—so, you'd better hope I don't get to the point where I'm willing to let the world end, or it just might." Doyle aimed his index finger straight at Angel's chest as he posed the important question. "Now, are ya gonna quit feeling sorry for yourself long enough to come help me, or am I just wasting my time here?"

Angel gave a curt nod, indicating that he would be able to put aside his bad attitude in order to save the world—or, in the very least, he'd be able to bring the bad attitude with him and use it to his advantage. Doyle would take what he could get.

"So, here's my thinking—the guy with the world-ending future is probably just a karaoke buff. Otherwise, he woulda stuck around to actually hear about his cataclysmic future, which he didn't." Doyle explained.

"Which means you want to hit up a bunch of karaoke bars." Angel guessed. He couldn't have been any less enthusiastic if he tried, but that was a marked step up from his seething anger from only seconds earlier. "This might be your lamest attempt to connect me with humanity, yet."

Doyle snorted with a quick burst of sarcastic laughter. "Ya don't know how much I wish this was a lame attempt, bud." He spoke over his shoulder as he started to head towards the front door. "But, hey, if we can't stop the world from ending, there are worse ways to spend our last night together."

"Name one." Angel grunted. Despite his hesitation, he followed Doyle out the door.

After all, if there was no world, there was no way to exact his revenge on Wolfram & Hart.

Angel did still have his priorities.

"Thanks for the beer, man." Doyle said, plunking the empty bottle down on the coffee table. "Don't beat yourself up. These things happen."

"Yeah, I guess." The man named Gene replied, not looking wholly convinced that was true. So what if the guy had nearly destroyed the world an hour earlier—it had been completely accidental. All in the name of love. Couldn't really blame a guy for that. "And thank you guys for... y'know. I'm uh, I'm really sorry. Again."

"Don't mention it." Doyle assured him, speaking for Angel as well, who was present, but unsurprisingly reserved during the late night drink with their latest client, if one could call him that. "It's what we do. Isn't that right, Angel?"

"Yeah." Angel said, placing his own empty bottle of beer down beside Doyle's. "I guess so."

With that, the two heroes of the night rose from their seats and made their way out of Gene's cramped and cluttered apartment. The place may, in fact, have put Doyle's old apartment to shame. Once on the street, Doyle immediately began digging through his pockets for a cigarette, which would pair nicely with the beer he'd just chugged. It would also help with the frazzled nerves he'd been ignoring for the better part of the evening—to think how close the world had come to ending tonight. Man, this job never got any easier. If it wasn't one apocalypse, it was another.

Not to mention, Doyle had found himself empathizing a little too much with this Gene guy; finding it awful hard to blame the poor heartbroken sap for what he'd done. He loved a woman enough to want to spend forever with her, and was willing to freeze a single perfect moment in time rather than let her walk away from him. Besides, how was the guy supposed to know a bunch of apocalypse-worshipping Lubber demons would hijack his genius invention and try to spread the time-freeze bubble to the entire universe?

It was all a matter of perspective, Doyle supposed. Before the moment of loss, you'll do whatever you can to keep what you have. After it's already gone, your only choice is to move on. Sometimes you can even find the silver lining in having lost whatever it was in the first place. In Gene's case, the silver lining was that he wasn't responsible for ending the world—thanks to Angel and Doyle's timely intervention. In Doyle's case, the silver lining of losing Cordelia was… well, not so silver on his end, but hopefully, a little shinier on hers.

At least Doyle had the mission again. The Host had confirmed as much, and tonight—with Angel by his side, fighting the Lubber demons and disabling the time-freezing device—for the first time in a long time, Doyle felt the way he'd felt when all this had started. He felt hopeful. Or, as hopeful as he could feel in the face of what he'd lost and still stood to lose.

Hope that even as a demon—a way-more-than-half-demon—Doyle would find something worth living for. Watching Angel raise a kid; that would be something. Saving the world a lot; that was something, too. And if Angel got to Shanshu while Doyle was still alive to see it; well, yeah, that was definitely something. All those things still mattered to a demon as much as a man. Probably.

Heck, worst-case scenario, Doyle could probably hit up the Host for a bartending gig. Sea Breezes were pretty unappealing, but Doyle had no doubt he could make one better than the current bartender.

"Thanks again for helping out tonight." Doyle commented to the vampire silently walking at his side. He had finally found his pack of smokes and shook one out into his hand, sticking it between his lips as he continued his pocket-search, this time for a light. "Saving the world is real progress." Doyle found his lighter and briefly paused to light his cigarette; Angel had reflexively paused along with him.

"I don't get it." Angel said, observing Doyle curiously as he successfully lit the cigarette and returned the lighter to his pocket. "It doesn't have to be this way for you."

"Hey, I've tried to quit." Doyle argued, taking a drag off the cigarette and then removing it from his lips. "Don't really see the point right now—I live alone, and the only other guy in the building doesn't breathe."

Angel gave a subtle eye roll, apparently not referring to Doyle's bad habit of filling his lungs with poison. "I mean, you don't have to be like that guy. Or me." He clarified, keeping his head down and his hands firmly shoved in his pockets. "You can get Cordelia back. You can be happy again."

That gave Doyle pause, and he took a moment to really study his friend, before lifting the cigarette back to his lips and taking another long drag. Just when he thought the night couldn't get any more miraculous—there it was. Angel did still care.

Too bad the thing Angel still cared about was something that was impossible at this point—happiness wasn't in the cards for Doyle.

"Actually, I can't." Doyle corrected his friend. "And even if I could, I wouldn't. Not with what's happening to me."

The wrinkled brow look on Angel wasn't all that uncommon, but he looked far more puzzled than usual. "What's happening?"

Doyle gestured for them to start walking again, and they fell into an easy pace down the semi-lit city street. He had wanted to confide in Angel for months, but forced himself to keep his own troubles to himself. Angel's future was the only thing that mattered, so Angel's troubles came first. But now, Doyle saw the err in that strategy. Angel needed to connect, he needed to see outside himself, and the only way he was going to be able to do that was to be reminded of someone's pain other than his own. Luckily, Doyle had plenty of pain to share.

"Simply put—I think I'm losing my humanity." Doyle confessed, keeping his eyes focused on the shimmering concrete below his feet.

"That doesn't make any sense." Angel replied, clearly disbelieving of the words he'd just heard. "You just convinced me to save the world tonight—your humanity is just fine."

"Well, I'm losing my human-ness, in any case." Doyle amended. "Looks aside, I've been walking around with quite a few demon traits these days. Can't shake 'em. I'm thinking they're permanent fixtures, yeah?"

"For how long?" Angel wondered, mirroring Doyle's posture as he too walked with his eyes locked to the ground in front of them.

"Longer than I care to admit." Doyle shoved the smoldering cigarette between his lips and left it there this time, thrusting his hands into his pants pockets. "And not nearly long enough until my human side is a thing o' the past."

Angel shook his head adamantly, finally cheating a glance in Doyle's direction. "I don't think it works that way, Doyle."

"How are we supposed to know how it works?" Doyle rebutted. "I was completely human for the first two decades of my life. And not for lack of opportunity, let me tell ya. One hug from my Aunt Trudy and I'd be sneezing for a week—Lord, that woman wore a lotta perfume." Taking one final drag, he pulled the cigarette out from between his lips and flicked it away into the gutter. "Now, here I am six years later and things are definitely changing again. My senses, my strength—definitely exceeding the normal human limits, man."

"No offense, but that doesn't sound like a bad thing." Angel said carefully. "You've never wanted to use the demon's strength because it meant you had to change your face—this way you wouldn't have to."

Doyle huffed at Angel's lack of understanding. Then again, maybe it wasn't that surprising coming from a vampire who always had his demon attributes, whether he was in vamp face or not. "You're assuming I'll still have a human face when all's said and done." Doyle pointed out. "Which I'm not so sure I will. It's getting to be way too easy to switch into the spikes, and way too hard to get back out of 'em."

"You think it's evolution—that you can't stop it." Angel noted. "What if it's something else? What if you can stop it?"

"Yeah, well, Harry's looking into it. But, I'm not terribly optimistic there's anything can be done." Doyle revealed. "It's just one of those times the deck is stacked against me—been happening my whole life."

"I'm sorry." Angel mumbled, finally believing what Doyle was saying, and realizing what that probably felt like from the other side. "You should've told me sooner."

"Why?" Doyle asked, letting a small hint of bitterness creep into his otherwise easy demeanor. "'Til tonight I wasn't sure we were still fighting on the same side, much less still considering ourselves friends. Hasn't really felt like that in a while, yeah?"

Angel didn't respond right away, but as they walked under the umbrella of a streetlamp, Angel slowed and finally came to a halt right before exiting the veil of false light. "Maybe we should have another drink."

The beginnings of a grin broke out on Doyle's face as he acknowledged the small, twisted olive branch Angel was extending. "Just so happens, I know a sports bar in the neighborhood."

Angel didn't smile back, but he did bob his head, indicating that Doyle should lead the way, and he would follow. No more words were necessary at that point. The two demons continued to walk side-by-side through the darkness, leaving the light of the streetlamp behind.