Title: Rest In Pieces
Fandom: Angel
Pairing: Angel/Cordelia
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: Through "Not Fade Away," disregards comics.
Summary: Cordelia once made a promise. Her soul can't rest until she keeps it.

Notes: I have had the beginnings of this story on my computer for years now, and keep saying I'll finish and post it someday. Except…I never do. I think I lack motivation, and while sometimes feedback paralyzes me, at other times it is a fire that compels me forward. So, here is the beginning of what I hope to be a post-AtS epic that gives Angel and Cordelia's relationship the respect it deserves. If I don't update often, please don't hate me. And again, feedback inspires (and also terrifies)!

Disclaimer: If I owned Angel, there is no way Charisma Carpenter would have been replaced by James Marsters. I am poor and bitter.

Prologue

There was never supposed to be an "after."

He had poured everything he was into this, given his soul, signed away his future, killed his family. But there had been a deep, strangely comforting assurance in knowing that before the next sun rose over Los Angeles, his ashes would be settled with the rest of the filth in this alley behind the one building that had ever felt like home to him.

But without knowing quite how, he was still alive and fighting when he felt the first prickle of the approaching dawn. There had been unexpected help along the way; street fighters, Slayers, demon hunters Angel had never heard of all turned up and joined the fray. How many of them had fallen in a battle that was supposed to be his alone? Wes was gone before it even started. Gunn had bled out a few hours into the fight. He had lost track of Spike and Illyria, could not say if they were dead or alive, could not say if he even cared.

The demon horde had thinned considerably, hundreds killed, thousands fled. A trail of corpses littered the block around the old hotel. Even as he continued to fight – go through the motions, kick, stab, twirl, stake, repeat – Angel found himself wondering what the daytime population of the City of Angels would think of it. This was not a single body to be dismembered and disposed of before the sun rose; this was a battleground. But then, it was L.A. They would probably just think someone was shooting a film. Humans had an enviable ability to rationalize.

The warning of sunrise hummed louder in his skin. He ignored it. This was his final fight; this was his last stand. He refused to run in fear of the light. Most of the demons did not share his commitment; as the grey air softened into blue, they slunk away, into sewers and boxes and hiding holes. Self-preservation was a vaunted value for most species of the universe.

Angel's skin began to sizzle. Had he not sensed it minutes before, the smoke rising from the flesh of his hands would have told him his long overdue death approached. He closed his eyes and waited for it. There would be no redemption, no life from death. That was a fool's dream, a hope that had deserted him months, maybe years ago.

He had lost all the most important battles. He had never been able to save the people who mattered. Buffy. Doyle. Darla. Cordy. Fred. Wes. Gunn.

A strong hand seized him by the back of the neck and threw him through a boarded window. Angel had not even heard his attacker approach. He sat, dazed, among the wreckage, blinking through the dusty darkness into the hole his body had just created.

"You are foolish, vampire." The tall, lithe form of Illyria stepped into view. "You were about to be incinerated."

"Thanks for the update," Angel growled. He half-considered shoving her out of the way and rushing into the sunlight anyway, but, now that his death had been robbed of its poetic justice, it seemed a coward's action.

He shook himself off and rose carefully to his feet, only now feeling the exhaustion and the injuries of the night. Hamilton's blood had given him an added power, probably the only reason he was still standing, but the effects were wearing off.

Angel felt light-headed. It was times like this he most missed Cordy's tender post-battle care. He pushed the thought ruthlessly away, a habit he had perfected over the months without her, long before her actual death.

Illyria was staring at him, with horrible, empty eyes in the soft, beautiful face which had once belonged to Fred. It was harder to lock away memories of the gentle physicist when her form still haunted them all daily. Unlike Wesley, Angel found no comfort in that. It was a stomach-churning, bile-raising reminder of his own failure.

He turned away from the god's penetrating stare and surveyed the room around them. The smell identified it instantly as the Hyperion, but its dilapidated state and its position on the first floor, facing the alley, led him to believe it was a room which had seen very little use until Jasmine and her followers forever tainted this place.

"Your people are all gone," Illyria observed, drawing Angel out of his increasingly bitter thoughts, to give him even more reasons to brood. "You are lost. Alone. Like me."

Angel's back stiffened. There was nothing he wanted to have in common with this abomination. "Yeah, well, don't feel you have to stick around or anything. I'm sure you have…minions to find or…planets to invade. You know, stuff."

Illyria tilted Fred's head, as if pondering his words. "No. There is nothing for me anymore. But – your warriors – Wesley, Charles Gunn – what is done to honor the dead?"

"Funeral. We'll have a funeral." That was assuming they found the bodies intact. Angel winced at the thought. "Or a memorial service." He tried to think about the necessary arrangements; notifying families – did Gunn even have a family left? – calling funeral homes, buying cemetery plots – after Cordelia's funeral Wesley said he wanted to be buried at sea, not suffocated under all that dirt. But the more he thought, the more the fatigue caught up with him. He felt like he could sleep an eternity, and, really, what was stopping him now?

"Well, it's a beautiful day in the neighborhood," a far-too-cheery Spike greeted them from the broken window – the broken window through which the sun was shining brightly.

Angel could only gape, as the distinct sound of a heartbeat silenced over a century ago echoed in his ears.

"You are human. How can this be?" Illyria asked the question Angel couldn't get past his uncooperative lips.

"That's quite a story, Blue." Spike was positively preening as he sauntered into the room, staying in the path of the light as if to taunt Angel from where he hovered in the shadows. "Turns out they weren't wrong about that Shoeshine thing after all. A vampire with a soul saves the world enough times, and he gets himself a nice little jolt with the cosmic defibrillator. So I pulled a St. George, and the ticker just started going a-thumpity-thump. Kinda makes you wonder how Peaches here never managed such an easy trick, now don't it?"

As jealousy, anger, and an odd feeling of betrayal – by who or what, he wasn't sure – raged through his lifeless system, all Angel could mumble in response was a petulant, "I wanted to kill the dragon."

"Shucks. Better luck next time, Pops."

There would be no next time, of that Angel was sure. He was done with this. Done with Powers and prophecies, humanity and a redemption that would never be. All he had ever managed in his attempts to help was to add yet more sins to his already overloaded soul. No more. Angel was—

A young woman walked a small boy down a sparsely-lighted street in Koreatown. Claws flashed in the darkness, as the screaming child was separated from his now decapitated mother. The shrieking abruptly stilled as the creature sank sharp teeth into the still-living boy…

It was Angel who was screaming instead, as he felt the boy's pain tear through his body. He was on his knees, holding his head against the force of the vision.

"Look, I know you're upset about the Shan-shu, but isn't this a little melodramatic even for you, Peaches?"

Angel glared at Spike as he slowly rose to his feet. "I had a vision."

"A vision? Like the ones your cheerleader got? Thought you said that was a one-night only deal."

"I thought it was, too." Angel couldn't think of anything clever to say, not about this. He didn't even know how to feel about it. Relieved that his connection to the Powers – to Cordelia – was not severed? Or furious that he was once again being given no choice in his future?

"So who'll we be savin' then?"

Angel bristled at Spike's artless question. "We? Who said you had anything to do with it? You already got your walking papers from the Powers. No more superpowers, remember?" Satisfaction surged through him at the dumbfounded look on Spike's face.

Spike recovered quickly though. "None of the rest of your little groupies ever had anything goin' for 'em in the hocus pocus way, but you let them tag along."

"Yeah, and now they're all dead." Angel's voice was hard, and he shot a discreet glance at Illyria, who was quietly listening to their conversation. "Maybe it's just me, but if I were given my humanity back, I wouldn't be so quick to throw it away again."

"Why you so bloody eager to get rid of me all the sudden?"

"It's not sudden. I always wanted to get rid of you."

"So where do you suggest I go then?" A slow smile crept over Spike's face. "Where would you go if it was you, Peaches?"

Angel knew the reason behind Spike's smile, knew what he expected him to say, and that he had walked right into it. But Spike forgot there was still one person alive he loved more than Buffy. "See Connor. Take my son out for a game of catch in the sunshine."

"Well, ain't that just Father Knows Best? Doesn't work for me, though. Don't got a son. 'Course, could have one now, no prophecies or anything." Spike paused, seeming to contemplate the idea. "Could take me a trip 'round the world, make a stop in Rome, see if the cookies are ready for a nibble."

Angel no longer had the energy to play the game. "You should do that," he answered wearily.

"Don't really need your blessing, Granddad."

"Then why'd you go out of your way to get it?"

Spike looked shocked for a moment, before a small smirk played across his lips. "I figure I'll never have a better shot than now."

"There is still the Immortal, you know." Spike or the Immortal for Buffy? Both thoughts were distasteful in the extreme, but Angel knew he no longer had the grounds to object. Spike's Shan-shu had killed any possibility of Angel ever having a future to offer Buffy or any woman.

"That bloody ponce," Spike muttered. His smirk disappeared. "Still, I gotta know. Can't spend the next forty years wonderin' what woulda happened if I'd taken a shot."

Angel simply nodded, Spike's words making him think, not of Buffy, but of Cordelia, of an eternity to spend lamenting the lost chances. "So what are you still doing here? Get lost." There was a kind of rough affection in Angel's voice that he was sure he hadn't meant to be there.

"Sure you don't want any help taking care of that big nasty in your head?"

"I've got it. It won't happen until tonight anyway."

Spike frowned. "I know that Lindsey bastard told me a lot of bollocks, but seems to me that the seeing and the fighting are different gigs. That what your girl was for, right? Now your brain's all wireless connected, shouldn't you have someone handle the rough stuff for you?"

"I will fight for the vampire," Illyria proclaimed, breaking her long silence.

"The hell you will," Angel said through gritted teeth. "I said I've got it under control. Spike, wherever you end up going, take that with you. If it stays here, I'll kill it."

Spike knew his grandsire well enough to know he was not exaggerating. Angel had been willing to kill Illyria back when the god was all-powerful; now that she wasn't, it was a foregone conclusion.

"Buffy won't like her."

Angel smiled cruelly. "Well, that's just an added bonus, now isn't it?"

"Bloody wanker."

"Limey bastard."

Spike nodded once, a sort-of, Can't stand to look at you, but I love you as much as I hate you, and I'll miss you, you great poof.

Angel returned the gesture and let Spike attach his own meaning to it.

"Come on, Blue. We gotta figure out how to get you past bloody customs."

The vampire watched as his last links to Wolfram & Hart and the life he had led before disappeared into the forbidden sunshine. Then he settled back into the shadows to wait for the darkness.

Once it came, he would save the woman and her son from the vision. He would do all he could to find and claim Wesley's and Gunn's bodies and put them to rest. Then he would find someplace to stay, someplace completely disconnected from the past.

Disconnect. That was all Angel longed to do. The visions would make it more difficult, of course, but he was determined that no more friends, no more people he loved, would be caught in the crossfire. That list seemed very short now: Connor, Buffy, Faith, Spike, Lorne, wherever he was. But Angel had no intentions of adding any more, just avoiding the ones who remained.

He found an old mattress among the debris and spread out. He needed rest to recuperate. Then he would think about the after.