A Stolen Future

She barely slept all night.

Doyle had walked away, and she had watched him go - his head hanging low, his shoulders slumped in dejection - he was still limping slightly from his run in with the mohra - and seeing him that way, she felt her first pang of guilt.

She had insisted he tell her what was going on - but she hadn't imagined it would be that. She hadn't thought it would be something so intimate and personal and painful. She would never have forced a confession from him if she had even the barest inkling of how much the truth was none of her business.

And now Doyle was hurting, because she'd forced him to give more of himself than he was ready to give - and that was all her fault, and so she felt lousy with guilt. Just wretched.

She didn't want to hurt Doyle. That was the last thing she wanted.

But she had - because of her stupid, bull in a China shop, pigheaded, self centredness. God - she could be such a bitch - and when she wasn't even trying to be!

She bit her lip and closed her eyes - but all she saw, behind her shut lids, was the image of Doyle limping away - in physical pain, and pain that she had caused him. Bitch bitch bitch bitch bitch. It was like she couldn't help herself - she was just a horrible person. No matter how nice someone tried to be to her - and Doyle had always been nice and kind and caring and thoughtful and really sweet - she would still act like a total bitch to them, she was just too selfish to do anything else.

When Doyle looked back on this whole disaster, he would wonder why he had ever wasted his time trying to be considerate to someone so completely incapable of being considerate to him.

And she didn't want that.

And so she couldn't sleep. All the soothing ginger and lemon tea in the world wasn't getting her there. In fact - all it was doing was making her need to pee.

After a quick trip to the bathroom, cursing the cold tiles beneath her bare feet, she got back into bed - relieved, now that the pressure on her bladder had been - and pulled her covers over her head. But still, all she could see was Doyle limping away into the dark of the night, alone and unhappy.

She sighed - so deeply it was like all the air leaving a tyre at once - and curled her hands into fists, smashing them down on the mattress beside her. 'Idiot!' she hissed at herself. And then she just lay there, smothered under her bedclothes and failing to get to sleep.

Hours crawled past, she became aware of the clock in the living room - it's hand ticking away every second. Tick tock. Tick tock. Bitch bitch. Tick tock. She pulled her covers down, sighed again and stared at the ceiling.

More time passed.

Her eyes started to itch with the staring. She shut them - and saw Doyle. She opened them - and felt the itch.

Eventually - eventually - her thoughts became woolly and disjointed, making less and less sense - her bitter self-recriminations became more outlandish and confused … and she drifted into a very light and incredibly unrestful sleep - in which the guilt and Doyle's pain still swished around inside her head, just in a more abstract way.

She woke up when the first rays of sun started to stream through the window - she checked the digital clock beside her, it wasn't even 6 yet.

'Oh god,' she brought her hands up to her head, the tips of her fingers digging into her hairline, and stared at the ceiling some more. She didn't feel any better now the morning was here. If anything, she felt worse.

After what seemed like forever, the digits on her clock rolled around to six. She heard the second hand on the clock in the living room tick around and the minute hand thunk into place on the hour. And suddenly she couldn't stand lying there feeling guilty another minute.

She sat up and grabbed the phone, before she had time to talk herself out of it, and dialled Doyle's number.

He answered almost immediately, and from the sound of it he hadn't slept much either. ''Lo?' His voice was all raspy.

'Hi - it's me. I wanna talk to you. If you'll talk to me. Will you come over?'

'Uh - yeah - uh - now?'

'Yeah.'

'OK,' he sounded puzzled - and more than a little worried. But he didn't sound angry. Maybe he hadn't worked out he should be pissed with her yet.

She hung up the phone and then jumped out of bed, her heart was beating against her rib cage and she felt sick with nerves. She stumbled her way into the bathroom and brushed her teeth and then her hair - pulling it back into a long ponytail, and stared into the mirror examining the dark circles under her eyes. It would be obvious she hadn't slept - she didn't have time to do a full face of makeup, it wouldn't take Doyle long to get across the city at this early hour.

She smudged some concealer onto the worst of her bags, put in eyedrops to make her eyes look brighter and then applied a bit of lip gloss … it would have to do.

Then she pulled off her pajamas and put on some joggers and a tee - she wanted to be comfy for this, but she couldn't have this talk in her pjs.

Once dressed, she made herself a cup of coffee and then she sat on the sofa and waited tensely for Doyle to arrive. The second hand on the clock kept on ticking around.

At ten to seven there was a knock on the door and - with her legs feeling wobbly and her tummy feeling like there was a whole load of butterflies inside battering to get out - she went to open it.

Without a bag full of makeup and a handy tube of concealer, Doyle had not been able to hide the dark circles under his eyes - and his hair stuck up, fluffy, pointing in every direction. He looked as tired as she felt. But his eyes were narrow, and alert - as if he wasn't quite sure what to expect.

'Hi, come in,' she ushered him inside.

He followed her in and then stood in the middle of her living room, looking awkward. She became aware of the ticking of the clock again - sounding deafeningly loud in the uncomfortable silence.

She bit her lip, and clutched her coffee cup to her chest for its protection. She wanted him to sit down, so she could sit down next to him - but he stayed standing and so she did too, hovering near the door and feeling the beginnings of regret at asking him over. 'Uh - you want some coffee?' she asked.

'Um - no, actually - can we just … whatever you have to say can you just say it? Let's get it over with, yeah?'

She swallowed, it felt like there was a painful lump in her throat - he must be angry with her after all, which - she couldn't blame him - but it still made her afraid for how this was going to go. 'Yeah - sure - um I just … well what I wanted to say was … I mean, I'm sorry - you know? About last night.'

He blinked at her. 'What?'

The butterflies beat their wings harder and the lump seemed to grow more solid, and she was worried she wouldn't be able to speak past it. 'I'm sorry - for making you tell me all that stuff last night. It was private and I should have backed off. I know I don't like secrets but they weren't secrets, they were personal stuff - and you have a right to keep that to yourself, like - there are just some things that don't belong in share mode. Like - if you had a terrible disease that would be entirely your business and you wouldn't have to tell anyone - not even your friends - unless you wanted to…'

She caught sight of his face, and heard her own words echo back in her ears and closed her eyes - cursing herself silently. 'I mean - not that being part demon is like having a terrible disease, I didn't mean it like that at all - I just mean … your genetics are your business, you know?'

He still didn't say anything.

'So I'm sorry,' she said again, she had a sinking feeling that she was not going to be forgiven so easily.

He blinked again. 'You're sorry?' he said finally.

She nodded her head, her whole body felt tense. 'I know - it's totally lame, it doesn't fix it - I get that. I do. But I still wanted to say it.'

'You wanted to say you're sorry,' he said slowly, '... to me? For …'

'Making you tell me about your demon half - I shouldn't have pried!'

'Huh,' he looked confused for a moment - and then dropped down onto the sofa. 'Huh,' he said again. He looked up at her, she stared back at him nervously. 'Well … that wasn't what I expected you to say.'

She furrowed her brow. 'Well, what did you think I was going to say?'

'I thought you called me over to yell at me.'

She felt even more confused. 'If I wanted to yell at you I wouldn't ask you over to talk, I'd tell you to get your ass over here so I could yell at you.'

He started to smile - and Cordelia started to feel the first tinges of relief - and maybe hope, that it was going to be OK. 'Yeah, I suppose you would.'

'Anyway,' she plucked up the courage to sit down next to him, 'why did you think I would want to yell at you?'

'Well…' he looked uncomfortable, 'about me being a demon.'

'That's insane! What? I'm gonna be mad at you 'cause you're not human? How is that your fault? I don't care about that...' She caught herself again. 'I mean - I don't mean I don't care, not in an uncaring way, I mean it doesn't make any difference - to us. Nothing's actually changed, has it?'

'Well, I guess when you put it that way...'

'I can't believe you'd think I'd care about this. I mean, you're short and you're poor and you're badly dressed and you expect me to see past all of that. What? You think I can forgive that shirt but not your DNA?'

He glanced down at the shirt he was wearing, as if to see what was so unforgivable about it, and when he looked up he was smiling. 'Do you really mean it - about things not being different between us?'

'Yeah, well,' she shuffled a little. 'Maybe. Maybe things could be different - you know if you wanted.'

He looked confused, 'what do you mean?'

Jeez, she was gonna have to spell it out to him. 'Like - maybe - if you wanted to ask me out to dinner, I'd probably say yes.'

'Yeah?' Suddenly his smile was very wide.

'Yeah' - she felt her own grow wide to match his.

'OK,' he cleared his throat. He was still grinning. 'Cordelia - I know we're both unemployed right now and money was always tight at the best o' times … but would you, if we can find the cash behind the couch cushions, like to go out with me for dinner one night?'

She couldn't control her smile, and her cheeks felt flushed and warm - and the butterflies had given up their battering, but now her tummy was flip flopping all over the place - making her glad she hadn't tried to eat anything before he arrived. 'OK - I mean, yes.'

'Really?'

'Yes! Really'

'Good.' He hadn't stopped smiling, they hadn't stopped staring at each other - and Cordelia was suddenly aware of her heart beating in time to the ticking of the clock. The silence between them lengthened, and they kept on smiling - and then Doyle leaned forward, slowly - and Cordelia inhaled sharply, and then held her breath.

He reached out and brushed a stray strand of hair behind her ear, and then closed the distance between them - his lips brushing against her own, featherlight and barely there.

She closed her eyes and kissed him back and, as their lips met and the kiss deepened, she knew, deep in the pit of her stomach, that this was the beginning of everything she had wanted - that everything she was so afraid she would never have, just yesterday, was finally going to be hers.

The second hand clunked onto the twelve.

…

'Are you sure we shouldn't have gone in to check on them?' Doyle asked her, as they left the office and headed down the street.

'What?' She frowned ... 'No. They can take care of themselves - they both have superpowers, remember? We go sticking our noses in where they're not wanted and wind up getting them broken.'

There was a tug at her heart, a pain in her chest - a strange emptiness telling her something wasn't right, that something precious had been lost.

But then the sensation was gone, just as suddenly as it had arrived and, by the time she and Doyle reached the coffee shop, she had already forgotten all about it.