Angel hadn't intended more than a brief conversation. He'd set the record about the lists straight and then vanish as quickly as possible. Somehow, this truly simple plan unravelled into debating the best ways to calm a toddler with one Nate Fisher while being ushered into the living room with his younger brother, until the older Fisher exclaimed: "Fine, put your money where your mouth is", handing his little daughter over.
He remembered the smell. That smell of milk and baby food and skin lotions and powder and, inevitably, some urine. That smell of blood, a baby's blood, sweet, so sweet, and more addictive than anything else. He remembered the taste.
For that alone, he could have cheerfully watched every single lawyer at Wolfram and Hart die. Locked them all in a cellar again and stayed to watch, this time. Instead, he found himself working with them, and sometimes he suspected he only did so to wait for the inevitable day when he would finally get his wish.
With one hand supporting the little girl's head while his arm carried her weight, he noticed how much hair she had already. He had never seen Connor at this age. But he had held him, felt the weight of his head, after delivering the cut that started what first Lilah and then Eve had quaintly called "the deal".
"You're good," Nate commented, sounding both impressed and ungracious, when the baby grew quiet.
"She's a sweet girl," Angel said, and tried to get back to what had originally brought him here. Somehow, he forgot to return the child to her father. "I'm sorry to bother you at this hour, but I think there was a misunderstanding with the list my co-workers brought earlier. Well, with some of the names."
"No way," Nate said. "I typed every single one of those invitations this afternoon and sent the European ones first, via email, just so that the people can make it to Los Angeles in time. And now you're telling me some names were wrong?"
The younger brother, David, looked vaguely offended, not at Angel, but at Nate. Obviously, this reaction didn't fit with his idea of professional decorum.
"Nate," he said, with just a hint of reproach.
"Sorry," Nate said, not sounding contrite at all. "I guess I need some supervision, after all the weeks of actually trying to have a life. Maybe if you came upstairs more often…"
"Sir," David said to Angel, blushing just the slightest bit, "of course we understand. If you'd take a look at the guest list, we'd be happy to accept any corrections."
Nate raised an eyebrow, but stood up, went to a desk and produced the guest list. It was an interesting byplay that reminded Angel of the days when he used to run an actual detective's office. Of Cordelia who had made just such comments in front of Doyle, Wesley and whichever client was present. He could hear her voice, clear and sharp. He could hear it tell him he was being a doofus, as usual.
The baby in his arm drooled a little, and he looked at the list. Why shouldn't they all come, in the end? What Andrew had told him about Buffy and his orders still smarted, but it paled now in front of the reality of Cordelia's death. They had been friends in Sunnydale, of a sort.
"I was wrong," he told David Fisher. "The list is correct."
There was an awkward moment of silence; then Nate said with an undertone of what sounded suspiciously like understanding, which caused his brother to look at him: "Must have been one hell of a week."
"A hell of a week," Angel repeated. More like a hell of a year. A hell of a couple of years.
"Ms Chase was a lovely woman," David said unexpectedly, and for the first time, it registered with Angel that there were traces of Cordelia's scent clinging to this man. He must have been working, working to transform her cold, still body into something that could be presented and shown in the kind of ceremony that… what had been the last burial he had attended?
The memory of finding Darla buried in earth came, unbidden and as powerful as always. Of hesitating that fatal moment, as he would do with Cordelia when he could have killed her just before Jasmine was born. Of Darla opening her eyes, those familiar eyes, blue, the same eyes that looked at him from her son's face when Connor asked him: "So what are you going to do about it?"
"She should have a wake," Angel said abruptly.
The Fishers looked nonplussed. "A real one," Angel clarified. "Not that kind of thing where everyone is whispering. She'd have hated that. An Irish wake."
David caught himself first. "Well," he said. "We can… we can certainly organize that…"
"One of my co… one of my friends specializes in – he's good with parties. I'll send him over. Cordelia would have – "
He remembered hiding in the kitchen while she sparkled and flitted through the guests in her apartment. There hadn't been any parties for her even before she fell into a coma, before Connor, before the Groosalug. Suddenly, it seemed monstrous that she had given up this part of herself, and he knew she had given it up for him. For the mission.
"Hey," Nate said. "We'll get it done. And could I have my daughter back now?"
His arms felt empty when the small warm body had left them. Angel looked at the Fishers. They were an odd pair, David smelling of death and embalming fluids and Cordelia, and Nate of his daughter, of cigarettes, and some quite recent sex with a brunette. Of life, in short, and yet Nate seemed the more detached of the two.
But then again, there was nothing so deceptive as detachment.
"Thank you for taking care of Cordelia," Angel said, and only when he had already left the house behind did it occur to him that he had said that exact same phrase to Connor during what passed for one of their more peaceful conversations during that horrible, haunting year.
At least neither of the Fishers had replied by telling him Cordelia was hogging the covers.