Disclaimer: Angel the Series and it's characters don't belong to me - they're the rightful property of Joss Whedon, David Greenwalt, Mutant Enemy and the WB. No infringement intended. For entertainment purposes only.

Spoilers: For season 3-5. The conduit are borrowed from the episode "Birthday" (s3ep11). Brief mentions of events from "You're Welcome" (s5ep12), "Not Fade Away" (s5ep22), "Inside Out" (s4ep17), "Calvary" (s4ep12) and "Shiny Happy People" (s4ep18)

Author's Note: Hope you guys are enjoying where the story is going. Thanks to everyone who's reviewed so far!

Chapter Six

When Angel returned to the Hyperion, he found Cordelia alone in the lobby.

"Where's Wes?" Angel asked. "I thought he was looking after you."

"And I thought I was an adult," Cordelia said. "I'm a big girl, Angel. Been known to spend whole minutes by myself at a time. Hours even."

He may have been angry that she'd been left alone, but she was sure that she detected a glimmer of a smirk appear in the corner of his mouth.

"Anyway, Wes went to meet Gunn at Caritas. He's checking in with a source to see if he can get a bead on where the Kalderash are basing themselves in LA. What's that?" Cordelia pointed at the scroll Angel had placed on the counter.

"Another prophecy. Kathy, uh… borrowed it from Wolfram and Hart."

"Where is she, anyway?"

"She said she had an errand to run."

Kathy stood in the centre of an ancient chamber waiting for the Powers to grant her an audience. She couldn't be sure that they would talk to her at all. They had always dealt with her on a need to know basis and, as far as they seemed to be concerned, she didn't need to know much. But this time, Kathy begged to differ.

The torches in the chamber burst into life, their flames casting eerie shadows all around her. No one appeared, but Kathy knew enough about the conduit to know what to expect. Disembodied voices began whispering around her.

"What does the witch want?"

"She seeks answers to questions she has not yet learned to ask."

"Send her away. Send her away."

"I do need answers," Kathy said. "Cordelia is suffering from the visions. The Kalderash are seeking to further their revenge. I need to know how this will affect the champion's destiny."

"The destiny has been written."

"But it can be changed."

"The humans are careless."

"Send her away."

"No! You need to tell me what I've changed by coming here," Kathy said. "I need to know what happened – what will happen. I can't help the champion if I'm kept in the dark."

"You wish to burden yourself with the knowledge of what was not meant to be?"

"You wish to suffer as the Seer suffers?"

"Cordelia? What's happening to her?" Kathy asked.

"She is being shown what was not meant to be known."

"They wish to punish the champion."

"They wish to make him suffer through her suffering."

Things began to fall into place for Kathy. "Cordelia's being shown what happened before? Before you sent me to them?"

"The witch begins to understand."

"Perhaps there is still hope."

"I need to know," Kathy said. "I need to see what she has been shown."

"As you wish."

Image after image flashed into her mind as the Powers showed her everything. Everything that had happened before, which they had written over when they asked Kathy to contact her brother.

The assault of images had barely begun and already Kathy knew that she had made a terrible mistake. She sank down under the weight of her new-found knowledge. All the things that she thought she had wanted to know. Now, she realised too late, she really didn't. Knowing just made everything harder.

Yes, she had made a terrible mistake.

Huddled on the floor, she wiped tears she hadn't noticed falling from her cheeks. One overwhelming thought rang clearly in her mind.

Angel would surely hate her when he found out what she'd done.

Not that it was deliberate. Of course not. She had returned to help. Returned at the bidding of the Powers to save Angel from himself, to steer him back onto his true path. As a result he had gained a new alley. Regained his sister.

But he had unknowingly lost so much more.

"Please, she whispered to the unseen beings around her. "In changing things, have I made things better or worse?"

The Powers must have taken pity on her. But it was a strange kind of pity. More images – pain, destruction, death. The lives of everyone Angel cared about in tatters.

Then one final set of images flashed in her mind. A comatose Cordelia. Angel receiving a phone call. His heart breaking. A signature in blood officially ending his destiny.

The sorrow Kathy felt was outweighed by her relief at the knowledge that these things would not now happen. And it confirmed something that she had long suspected.

Angel's destiny lay in the hands of his seer.

"Thank you," she whispered.

All was not yet lost.

Screaming. Someone was screaming with fear and with pain. A girl was being held down.

Symbols flashed by - archaic and mystical in appearance. A woman's face. Beautiful. Unfamiliar, and yet… Then her face changed and became horrific - decayed and maggot infested.

A young man - no more than a teenager, really - held a dagger to the girl's throat. A voice told him to do it. To kill the girl. Cordelia recognised the boy as the same one who kept appearing in her dreams and the voice as her own.

She found herself running through the Hyperion, terrified. Someone was following her. She kept looking behind her in fear.

Suddenly, her body collided with something solid and she turned to find Angel, holding her by the arms, preventing her from falling. But it wasn't relief she felt.

It was terror.

He wore his vampire visage. When he grinned, she knew it wasn't Angel.

Angelus.

Then she was on the floor in an unfamiliar room, crying out with inexplicable pain. She looked up and saw Angel standing above her. His sword was drawn and he readied to strike.

"I'm so sorry," he said.

She screamed.

When the vision ended, Cordelia felt physically sick. In her disorientation, she thought she was standing up at first, before she realized that someone was supporting her weight.

She was in Angel's arms.

Unable to stop herself, she flinched. Ignoring the dizziness she felt, she pulled away from him and sat down at her desk. It was only then she realized that she was shivering.

Angel crouched down beside her, trying to get her to meet his eyes. But she couldn't look at him - not with the vision still so clear in her mind.

Once again, it had all been too vivid.

A sob escaped her throat before she could stop it.

"Easy, Cordy. What happened? What did you see?"

She shook her head, unwilling to tell him. Unwilling to relive it.

Before he could ask her again, she felt the bile rising in throat. She fled to the bathroom and only made it there time before she vomited.

"Don't tell me not to worry!" Angel told his sister, angrily pacing backwards and forwards across his office.

Cordelia had been in the bathroom for almost half an hour and told everyone who knocked on the door to leave her alone.

It was all Angel could do not to rip the door off its hinges.

"Okay, I won't," Kathy said. "But you need to calm the hell down."

He shot her an angry look and continued pacing.

"Great. Because this is exactly what Cordelia needs," she said. "You freaking out on top of everything else. Way to be a champion in a crisis."

Her reasonable words finally seemed to penetrate, and he slumped into his chair.

"I just - I feel so helpless. When something hurts the people I care about, I want to be able to pummel it. But the visions - I - I honestly don't know what to do."

Kathy knew exactly how he felt. She had returned from the Powers with a great deal of information, but she didn't yet know what to do with it, or how it would help Cordelia.

"Maybe we should call Wesley while he's still at Caritas," Angel said. "Get him to bring Lorne back with him."

"I don't need to be read." Cordelia's voice startled them. She stood, half propped up by the door frame, looking as pale and sick as Angel had ever seen her. He got up and helped her into a chair. This time, she didn't resist him.

"They're getting worse, Cordy," he told her. "Maybe Lorne can…"

"I don't want him reading me Angel! I'm fine. It was just your run of the mill vision. It just left me a bit nauseous, that's all."

"Since when does a 'run of the mill' vision make you lock yourself in the bathroom for thirty minutes?" Angel wanted to know. "What did you see?"

"Nothing," she replied, a little too quickly.

Angel wasn't buying it. "Cordelia…"

"Angel." Kathy put her hand on her brother's arm and pulled him away. "Give us a couple of minutes, would you? Maybe go into the kitchen and make Cordy some tea? I've left some herbs in there that should help with the pain and the nausea."

Angel looked ready to argue, but then gave it up. Experience was beginning to teach him that with Cordelia, the harder he pushed, the less progress he'd make. Without another word, he left for the kitchen, leaving the seer alone with the witch.

"So what exactly don't you want Angel to know?"

Cordy said nothing, but she didn't need to. Kathy could see her aura well enough, and knew that Cordelia was carrying a heavy burden.

"Cordy –"

"Angelus," Cordelia said. "I keep having visions of Angelus. Not just him, though. So many different things and I don't know how to make sense of it all. I've seen myself do things… things I couldn't possibly ever do. And Angel, he… And there's a baby…"

Kathy shut her eyes as everything the Powers had shown her flashed through her mind. Cordy had been shown many of the same images she had. But the visions weren't to help her or to warn her. They were a way to make her suffer, in the hopes that her pain would cause Angel further suffering. And it was time that it ended.

It was time Kathy told them all the truth.

"You don't need to worry about these visions coming true, Cordy," she said. "Let's wait for Wes and Gunn to get back. Then I'll explain – everything that I can."