"Cordelia," Doyle choked. "Cordelia, Cordelia . . ." It was a chant, by now.

"Angel!" Buffy demanded. "Are there any more? Angel!" She shook him. "Snap out of it! Are there more coming?"

Angel shook his head. "I don't . . . I don't know."

Usually, Angel was collected in a crisis. But something was wrong, terribly wrong, and not in a Cordelia-was-dead-on-his-office-floor wrong; it was a something-was-wrong-with-the-whole-world wrong. Something about what had happened was twisted, perverted, as if the very fabric of reality itself had been turned inside out. And for some reason the fabric of reality had something to do with Buffy's skirt.

Think, Angel was telling himself desperately. The blond Slayer kneeling to feel Cordelia's pulse could not be the First Evil. She was definitely who she looked like—Buffy Summers, love of his life and Vampire Slayer. He had guessed wrong and it had cost Cordelia her life. Cordelia was . . .

Think. Something else had been wrong today, something . . . inside out . . .

Or right side in.

His shirt. He had worn a black silk shirt yesterday and he had stripped it off carelessly, not wanting to remember how Buffy hadn't pulled it off of him, how she hadn't touched him. He'd left it inside-out on the floor. But this morning, it had been hanging right-side-in in his closet. Buffy had come down his stairs in what he had heard Cordelia call yesterday a Bulgarian skirt, and a Mohra demon had bashed through his inner office window at nine o' two a.m. On the dot.

Buffy had stood and was frantically talking on the phone to a 9-1-1 operator. Doyle was still kneeling beside Cordelia, propping her head up, stroking her hair. Angel looked at their clothing, but he couldn't be bothered to notice what his co-workers had worn the day before. He stood up and walked across his office to look at his calendar. "What day is today?" he asked.

"Oh God—Cordelia," Doyle choked. "Cordelia . . . Angel—she's . . . I think she's dead."

Angel swallowed thickly and closed his eyes. "I know." He had known the instant the three heartbeats in the room had dwindled to two. "Tell me the date." He swung around to face him, then, to meet Doyle's eyes.

Angel had seen eyes like that too many times. The demon inside him was roaring with approval; eyes like that were beautiful, a triumph of grief, despair, and helplessness. What made Doyle's exceptional was the wildness there, and that made Angelus jealous. Rarely had he been able to create the masterpiece of anguish that was now in this man's eyes. "Doyle," Angel said, very calmly. "I would not be asking if it wasn't extremely important."

Doyle swallowed convulsively, attempting to push back the assault of emotion after emotion—tide after tide of savagery and confusion. For the most part, he was unsuccessful, and Angel's stolen blood was reveling in it, savoring it. "It—it's . . . it's the twenty-sixth," Doyle finally managed. "I remember because I—" His eyes widened and swung back to Cordelia, and his voice stopped on a choke.

Angel looked at the calendar. The twenty-sixth. His eyes found the square on the calendar, and then moved to the square before it. The day before. The twenty-fifth. Thanksgiving Day, it read in italics, on the lower line of the square. That was it, then. The pieces of the puzzle—the skirt, his shirt, Buffy's behavior, and the time on his office clock—all of them clicked together in one simple, incomprehensible solution.

Today was yesterday.

"The paramedics are coming," Buffy was announcing, still holding the phone to her face. Her voice was tight, a dam against shock and any other reaction, so sharp and blade-like it would have made Angelus cackle, also, had Angel really had time to think about the emotion that tone was hiding.

"Xander?" Buffy said suddenly, her attention jerking back to the phone. "I need to talk to Willow. Or Giles. I called them but they . . . Good. Put Willow on. I need—No. Just—no. I can't talk to you about this right now. Give me Willow."

She was getting the number for Cordelia's parents, some part of Angel acknowledged vaguely. How much would her parents care? he wondered. Would it be fun to watch them grieve, too?

Angel grit his teeth against the questions. Knowing Buffy, she was going to get her friends over to L.A. to find out what the hell was going on. Buffy would refuse to believe that it was just a freak coincidence that a demon would jump in a random window and kill someone who had once been an almost-friend of the Slayer. But, if for nothing else, Buffy would get her friends to come because this was personal; this was a death she would feel the need to avenge; this was a death after which she couldn't just do nothing.

Angel wasn't about to do nothing, either, but even if the Powers fixed this, the Oracles hadn't exactly proven themselves forthcoming. He had to figure out what was happening so nothing else like this could happen again, and having a Watcher here would be a definite benefit.

The more the merrier, a little voice inside him said joyfully, because the part of himself he hated couldn't wait to savor the look in Xander Harris's eyes when he found out Cordelia Chase would soon be pushing up daisies.

Angel touched Buffy's arm, and her eyes flickered over to him in acknowledgement. One of the things he had always loved best about her was that at a time like this, they didn't need words. She didn't know where he was going or what he was going to do, but that touch on her arm told her enough: he was going to deal with this situation through his own channels while she dealt with it through hers.

His own channel happened to be under the post office. Angel had known as soon as Doyle had shown him how to get here that this was not the last he had seen of this marble hall with the white light shining at the end of it, but he had not expected to return so soon. He was already sick of the place. "Come before us, lower being," the male intoned.

"We've discussed this," Angel said, gritting his teeth against the realization that he had said the same thing to Buffy already this morning. If he had caught on to all the déjà vu sooner, all of this might have been avoided. He turned to the Oracle with the female visage. "I'm not a lower being, you said so yourself. I'm willing to sacrifice." He paused, his face infinitely dark, honing his voice into something deadly. "Now bring her back."

"You call us forth, and then proceed to speak with insolence?" she queried coolly. "Your offering?"

Angel ripped off his wrist-watch and threw it at the woman. Ironically, the Oracles' swallowing of the day had forced them to return both of his offerings, because they had arranged time such that he had never actually given them the watch or the china vase. He assumed that this would still be enough. Then he saw the male's arm rise, and realized that the Oracles were very, very upset by his behavior. "Wait," he pleaded. "Wait, I—you . . . The fold in time, I didn't expect it to happen like this."

The male pursed his lips and continued to raise his arm, but the female's own arm shot out before her counterpart could jolt him back through the Gateway. "Wait," she insisted. "He has bought a moment of our time with his. A lower being thinks in such reciprocal relationships. He is not normally equipped to comprehend the next dimension," she informed the male. Then turned her disturbingly colored eyes to Angel. "And yet you speak of Time folding. Why?"

Angel willed his frustration into a small corner of himself, making his face blank. Living with a demon under his skin had made him an expert at self control, but today felt as though it was stretching his limit to the breaking point. "Because you folded it," Angel answered slowly, as if talking to a child. "The first time I relived the day like I was supposed to, but the second time—I didn't expect it. It's not supposed to be like this. Cordelia's dead. I need to do it over again."

The male, who had leaned forward a little, straightened, and waved a dismissive hand. "He is suffering delusions," he told the female. "This is not our concern."

The female stepped down toward Angel, looking him over. Then she looked back toward the male. "He remains a warrior, brother, and thus our concern. His delusions may be the reason the Auguries proved false."

"What delusions?" Angel demanded, trying to keep a tight rein over his anger, over the picture of Cordelia in his head, twisted in all the wrong ways. "I came back and asked you to make me back into a vampire so I could protect Buffy, so I could go on fighting. You swallowed the day. It all worked. I don't know why you'd make it repeat again, it was good the—"

The female's eyes changed from discomforting to downright murderous in their intensity in a split-second. "You would sacrifice every drop of happiness and love you have ever known for another?" she demanded.

"That's not the point," Angel protested impatiently. "The point is the second time is messed up, and I need to—"

The male waved a negligent hand. "You do have a point, and thus the root of your delusions. A line is an infinite series of points, but time is not linear, mortal. What you speak of happened long ago, and at the same time has not happened yet."

Angel didn't even bother trying to work that out. What he was stuck on was the female's question, her incredulity that he would sacrifice so much for Buffy. And yet, didn't the Oracles already know that? The Powers were the ones who had folded time; they must know the reasons for it. Shouldn't they? Because something was tickling his mind, something like a resurgence of that good old déjà vu—the feeling that they had discussed this before. "You don't remember," he said slowly.

I'll never forget.

"You're honestly telling me you folded time so thoroughly that even the Oracles of the Powers Themselves don't remember?" Angel asked. "How can that happen?" Suddenly, he laughed, a harsh, barking sound. "They must've really screwed this one up, because They didn't just do it once, They did it twice."

"The Powers That Be do not remember or forget. They are," the female said simply.

"We are vessels. The Auguries were wrong, but they have proven wrong infinitely and never. This is not our concern," the male intoned.

"But they were right," Angel protested. "You did lose a warrior; you just made it so I could be one again so you didn't lose one after all. And again today. You made another day just like it—" he had to swallow this particular déjà vu those words inspired; it was too much, too painful—"except that when it repeated again it didn't happen right. I need to do it again so it does," he told them angrily. "Cordelia isn't supposed to die."

"What is done cannot be undone," the male said simply.

"But what is not done yet can be avoided," Angel protested. "You said so yourself!"

"Temporal folds are not to indulge at the whims of lower beings," the male told him coldly.

"But you said . . . you said my sacrifice, my . . . willingness to give up every drop . . ." The image of Buffy in his arms, murmuring over and over again that she would never forget, never forget, was beginning to blend with the image of Cordelia, sprawled on the floor, her neck twisted in that obscene angle. Had he traded one for another? He knew with sickening certainty which one he would choose, every time, but no person should be forced to make that decision, to carry it with him for an eternity, to live with himself after he had made it. Why couldn't he have chosen himself? Why was he forced to choose between the woman he would love for all eternity and the woman a deep, sleeping part of him knew he had had the capacity to love for a lifetime? "Every drop . . ." he repeated dully.

"There has been no sacrifice," the female said simply.

"The events of which you speak have, to put it in the inaccurate terms more suited to your understanding, no place on your time line," the male explained. "They exist within your fourth dimension, but no mortal's mind could grasp the experience of them."

"You're saying it didn't happen," Angel said flatly. "You didn't fold time."

"In the limited reality one such as you is able to experience, no."

"But can't you still bring Cordelia back?"

"What is done—"

"Cannot be undone," Angel finished for the male Oracle, his voice thick with frustration. "You keep saying that! But she shouldn't have died; this isn't right." He paused, and then, as though it was dragged out of him, he said, "She was my friend."

"If that is so, then so shall it ever be," the female said gently.

"But it is of no consequence," the male concluded.

"The war rages on."

"Do not come to us again on so self-serving a matter," the man intoned, and lifted his arm, even as the female turned away.

To Be Continued . . .

Disclaimed: Lines stolen from AtS S1.8 "I Will Remember You" and 9 "Heroes".