Chapter 3

AN: This chapter's going to explain everything about Cordy being back and all.

Cordelia sat on the Chair. She traced patterns onto the bottom of the Chair and couldn't help but grip tightly onto this after a few seconds of tracing and she knew, even without looking, that her knuckles had turned white and where probably going to keep being white. She stared out into the black void and couldn't help but feel as if she was being judged. In a way she was, she was always being judged. They couldn't help but judge you. After all it was what they did.

They. Them. The Powers. The last time she'd been in this chair was when they were telling her that she could help Angel one last time back in Wolfram and Hart. It had been an important occasion hence the invitation to the Chair. Hardly anyone ever got to even see the Chair. It was a big thing to get an invitation once let alone twice. She was always known as a favourite. Even more than Doyle. And Doyle was pretty high up on the Powers favourites list. Top Ten if anyone had bothered to make a list of the Most Loved Messengers/Guides. Right up there with Whistler. Funny how the guides who helped Angel were always favourite to the Powers. He must be a soft spot or something.

Anyway, they didn't even invite her to the Chair when they told her that she was to be a higher power. Except that this time when she was to be a higher power it was for real. And she had been. Ever since she got back from Wolfram and Hart they'd promoted her for her good work. Also for the giving Angel the visions without meaning to. Not that they didn't know that she hadn't meant to. It was more for the sake of the kiss rather than the sake of passing the visions on.

She shifted slightly in the chair and looked around the black void. It was weird. White was usually meant to be all good and black was bad but it was the opposite when it came to links to higher powers. The White Room was the link to the 'evil' senior partners and the Chair in the Black Void was the link to the 'good' Powers That Be.

But then if there was one thing that Cordy had learned in all of her combined years of Sunnydale, LA and working as a higher power it was that nothing was as black and white as everyone thought. It was all just a different shade of grey. At times the senior partners had been known to do things that weren't so typically 'evil' and the Powers had been known to do things that weren't so typically 'good'. Not naming either of these not so typically would probably be best for both parties, so no naming.

Okay, so it was less of a black void and more of an extremely shadowy room in which the Chair was the central thing. They just called it the Black Void instead of the Shadowy Room because the Black Void was somewhat scarier. She looked around for a light source and then realised that it was actually her that was the light source. Well, she was all glowy but being a light source in an otherwise dark room was kinda stretching the 'weird' bounds.

"Sorry to keep you waiting Cor. How you been?" Doyle stepped out of the shadows and Cordelia smiled at the vision of her friend. The only one who was more favoured than her. Doyle was the conduit between the Powers and the higher beings so you can't really get more favoured than that.

"Good, how about you? Being a link to the Powers working out for you Doyle?" Cordy asked and Doyle grinned and walked towards her.

"It's been good. We get good dental." Doyle said and Cordelia laughed half heartedly and both of them knew it.

"So... Down to business then?" Cordy asked and Doyle nodded and looked slightly like he was being dragged kicking and screaming into it.

"So you're probably wondering why you're here an' all." Doyle said and Cordy nodded with a 'Hey can you blame me' look on her face. Doyle sighed and continued, "Alright. Well let's start with: You're lookin' good." Cordelia shot him a dirty which then turned into a big grin after a second or so. Then she attempted to harness the grin and get back to business. More specifically the business of why she was here.

"Come on Doyle, spill it." Doyle grimaced and continued to 'spill' it.

"Okay, okay. No need to get catty. The reason you're here for the second time is cos the Powers are giving you a chance." Doyle paused and Cordy filled the silence with curiosity.

"A chance? A chance to do what?"

"A second chance at life. A chance to help Angel..." Doyle said in an important voice and then dropped it to complete the sentence, "Again." Cordelia's eyebrows went up at the anticlimactic last word and she shot Doyle a look.

"What do you mean?" Cordelia asked straightforwardly but Doyle smiled a little half smile that made her think it wasn't such a straightforward question. But that thought disappeared as he answered her and her mind began spinning. She felt as if she'd become the girl in 'The Exorcist' what with the spinning of the head and the feeling crazy.

"Alright I'll break this down for you." Doyle rubbed his hands together and grabbed a chair out of thin air. He then sat down on it so that he was facing Cordy sitting on the Chair. He continued, "So you have been called here to get a choice of two things that can happen. One of the choices is that when I finish explaining here you're going to be sent back to L.A. As a human, as a normal person.

"Things will be a little, well, altered for your return. In the end you probably won't even remember it after a while. You would've never died, just left for New York to try your hand at helping the helpless there. That kiss before you left... It still transferred the visions to Angel so you moved to the big apple with only your big heart and the want to do good.

"And you've returned cos of some reason that you can make up. You missed the LA nightlife, you missed sunny California or you missed Angel. Any one of'm'll do."

"You're sending me back to Earth?" Cordy asked, clearly stuck on the subject.

"Mm, yeah. Powers don't just see the impending disaster, they see potential for tying up loose ends."

"I'm a loose end now?" Cordelia asked incredulously. Then Doyle attempted to cover up his slip of wrong usage of words.

"Well, not so much a loose end as a solution to a complex problem." Doyle looked at Cordy hoping that she bought this or at least was nice enough to pretend that she bought it.

"Complex?" Cordy seemed to contemplate the meaning of the word, "Huh. So do I get overtime?" Doyle grinned at Cordy's response, knowing that all was forgiven.

"Now there's the Cordy we know an' love." Cordy smiled widely and Doyle continued to just smile gently at her.

"You always used to lighten up a room when you entered it," Doyle looked around pointedly at the fact that she was lighting one up at the moment, only literally, "Now everyone else c'n see it too." Cordy just looked at him with sympathy at his longing for her, knowing nothing could be done about their situation, and he grimaced at her.

"Ah well, wit me playin' the part of the ghostly conduit not much I can do about it, eh?"

"I'm sorry." Cordy said softly and Doyle shook his head,

"Now, no sympathy should be comin' from your direction. I've seen what's going to happen if you choose to go, y'know, down dere," Doyle pointed to the floor, "And I'm cool with it, y'know."

"Doyle I-"

"If an apology's about to come out of that mouth then don't." Doyle looked Cordy straight in the eye, "I done nothin' to deserve it. You're gonna make him happy." Then realising the implications of mixing Angel and happy he added quickly, "I mean not perfectly happy. Just... very happy. An' he deserves it, y'know. Quoting a certain half demon we're 'putting the reward back in unrewarding'. I'm not sayin' you're not gonna make him perfectly happy," That caused alarm in Cordelia, and for good reason, but this was quelled when Doyle continued on cryptically, "I mean. You will. When he won't go all psycho über vamp killer on you the morning after. I'm getting ahead of myself. As I said before you have a choice. To go down to earth, become human, forget about your time as a higher being and help Angel. Or not to. To just keep on being a higher power."

"What kind of choice is that Doyle?" Cordy blew up in Doyle's face and he withdrew back on the chair and gave her a puppy dog look.

"Cordy, it's your choice." He said, hurt at her explosion.

"No, it's not Doyle. It's never my choice. The Powers make it seem as if it is by giving me two options. But they always know what I'm going to choose."

"That's because you always make the right choice." Doyle said, arguing on behalf of the Powers. Cordy snorted and said sarcastically,

"Yea right, I make great choices. Let's talk about them shall we. Choosing to become a higher power so I could get body hijacked by evil psycho happy lady." Cordy said packing it chockablock with pure sarcastic goodness. Things that make you go 'Mmm'.

"That was... Different." Doyle finished knowing just how it sounded.

"Right different." Cordy said with a look on her face and continued in a similar fashion, "Cos this time they didn't see it coming. Just like all those other times they didn't see it coming. Do they ever see it coming?" Cordy asked and Doyle just looked at her with an expression that made her wish she hadn't said it.

"You should know it the most that they do see things coming. Important things. Besides regardin' the whole evil psycho happy lady thing there where spies and infiltrators. Whom which we have fired in the most literal sense possible around here."

"I know Doyle." Cordy sighed heavily and continued, "It's just... You gave up your chance at love to be a hero so I tried it too. I figured that that was the way to go. You know heroism and all that."

"We're givin' you back your life Cor so dun worry bout the past so much. An' besides you dun need one grand gesture to be a hero. Livin' life is a heroic act within itself. So no givin' up love for the sake o' bein' a hero. Okay?" Cordy smiled at Doyle and said softly,

"Okay." Doyle put his hand to her head and was about to do what he was about to do and then took it away. He looked at her while appearing to be listening to something else. Then he actually looked at her, seeing her properly and relayed the message.

"The Powers are going to allow you to bring someone with you. Anyone you want. Whether they're dead or not. Or even," Doyle paused and then looked at Cordelia, wanting the next suggestion to really get through, "Left for a reason no one but you an' me knows."

"Fred." Cordy said quietly to herself, looking off into space, and Doyle nodded gently. Cordy looked up at Doyle and said, more firmly and actually directed at him, "Fred, I want Fred to come back with me." Doyle smiled at her and stood up, the chair he was sitting on disappearing. He bowed ever so slightly and then said,

"It's done."

Then came the blinding whiteness.