Disclaimer: The characters of AtS aren't mine. I'm just borrowing them for entertainment purposes. No infringement intended.
Spoilers: None.
Author's Note: I have a flight to catch tomorrow, so I thought I'd upload this chapter now. I'm going home for the holidays and I'll be taking a little break from the story. Not a long one, I promise, but I have loved ones I haven't seen in a few months and I want to spend some time with them, you know how it is.
To make up for the lack-luster previous chapter, this one has my favourite scene so far (yes, even more so that Cordy and Angel finally kissing). The conversation between Angel and Kathy was one of the first things I wrote for this story several years ago and I still love it. I hope you do to. If you do, please please review.
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you all!
Chapter Fifteen
Angel left Wesley to the task of providing the hospital with Cordelia's medical history and information. As soon as he got to his seer's side, he made it very clear that he would not be leaving any time soon.
As he held Cordy's hand, he could feel the pain she was experiencing radiating through her. She continued to thrash and scream regularly, the drugs the doctors constantly seemed to be administering not making a dent in her condition. They were at a loss as to what to do for her. Angel knew how they felt.
He didn't notice when Kathy left the room with Gunn and was surprised when he saw them return, surreptitiously carrying a large, leather-bound book and a box into the room.
"What –?" he started to ask, but stopped when Kathy put a finger to her lips.
"Gunn, get the door and the curtains," Kathy said quietly. "We only have a few minutes."
She took several large crystals from the box Gunn had been carrying and placed them around Cordelia's head. Then she picked up a small bag filled with iridescent powder.
"What's going on?" Angel asked.
"I already explained this to you. I guess you really weren't listening," Kathy said. "Conventional drugs aren't working and her body can't take much more of this, so I'm going to put Cordy into a mystical coma until we figure out how to reverse all of this."
She opened the book and began to chant softly, while Wesley and Gunn guarded the door. As Angel watched, the crystals began to glow, becoming brighter as Kathy continued with the spell. She poured some of the powder into her hand and sprinkled it over Cordelia's thrashing body. The light in the crystals intensified and then their light disappeared.
The change was instantaneous. Though she had been fitting and screaming just seconds before, Cordelia now lay perfectly still, the anguish on her face completely gone. Now, she might have been simply sleeping.
Kathy rushed to hide the evidence as a nurse burst into the room, shocked to find her patient's condition dramatically altered. When she ran to find a doctor, Kathy slipped away, removing all traces of the spell she had performed from the room.
In the end, the doctor's didn't think anything suspicious of the change in Cordelia. They merely congratulated themselves on finding the correct drug to sedate the patient.
An hour later, Wesley and Gunn had gone to Caritas to consult the Host on possible mystical treatments for Cordelia. Kathy sat in the waiting room, meditating on the problem herself and coming up blank. Something seemed to be blocking her. Every time she tried to focus on what was happening to Cordelia, she found the uncontrollable anger bubbled up within her as it had when she had confronted the gypsy woman. It was all she could do to keep it in check, let alone do anything productive like thinking.
Angel left the room and slumped, broken, into a chair beside his sister.
"Any change?"
Angel shook his head.
"They're doing tests," he said. "They made me leave."
Despite the seriousness of the situation, Kathy found that she almost smiled at the thought of anyone, barring Cordelia, making Angel do anything.
They sat in silence, lost in their own thoughts. A few minutes later, a crashing noise startled her back the present.
Angel had kicked a chair clear across the waiting room.
"Angel!"
Grabbing him by the arm, she pulled him towards the exit. He waited until they were in the car park before he began his ranting.
"Why do I keep letting this happen!"
"You don't - Angel, it's not your fault."
"The hell it isn't," he replied, his eyes flashing with fury. "I'm the one who brought her into this world. She came to LA to escape Sunnydale, and she could have, if it weren't for me. She should be out living life, not stuck in the shadows fighting demons. Getting visions that are slowly killing her. And now this? How is that right? I deserve this. This is my atonement. But she's done nothing to deserve it, Kathy. Nothing!"
He lapsed into silence, slumping against his car, his fury exercised, leaving nothing but despair in its wake.
"I can't keep putting her through this," he said quietly. "If... when she pulls through, that's it. She'll be better off away from me."
"And what about the visions? You think just because you send her away, cut her out of your life, that they'll just stop."
He flinched as though her words had physically hurt him. "Don't. Don't put it like that, like this is what I want. I want her in my life. I need her. But what I want and need doesn't matter now."
"You really love her, don't you?"
Her question seemed to startle him. But she didn't wait for him to answer.
"No wonder you want to send her away. You must be terrified."
"Kathy," he said, warning her to stop.
"No, you said your piece. It's my turn," Kathy said. "The thought of loving anyone really scares you, doesn't it?"
He looked at her as though she were crazy. "In case it's slipped your mind, I have a problem with love. It tends to make me a little too happy."
"It's nothing to do with Angelus or your curse," Kathy told him. "You never wanted anyone to get that close to you. Don't think I haven't seen it before. I grew up with you, Liam."
"Don't."
"I love you, brother, but I'm not blind to your faults. Mary Lynch was madly in love with you - a fine upstanding daughter of a prosperous merchant. And you were very much taken with her, if I'm not mistaken. I saw the way you looked at her. But then marriage was mentioned, and you went running scared. Straight into the arms of our housemaid."
Angel was shocked by her memories. "How do you know all this? You were a child."
"I had ears and eyes, didn't I? I knew a lot more about was going on than Father and Mother ever wanted me to know. You went from one girl to the next in our little home town. Running away from Mary Lynch, who would have made an honest man of you."
Angel looked down at the ground. "That has nothing to do with…"
"Doesn't it? You mean to tell me that somewhere, deep down, you aren't glad of your curse? Aren't a little bit relieved that you're able to use it as an excuse not to get too close? Because you're afraid to love. Because you're afraid to be loved. Because you've never felt worthy of it."
Angel pushed away from the car in frustration. "And so the witch becomes a psychiatrist? You're way off base on this."
"Am I? You're telling me that part of the reason you left Sunnydale wasn't because you believed you didn't deserve Buffy's love? That you felt it was only a matter of time before she rejected you, and so you left before she had a chance - "
"Enough."
But she wouldn't stop. "Because our noble father couldn't bond with his only son. Because he made you pay for that fact, daily, for the entirety of your natural life. Because of his inadequacies. His failings. He punished you and made you feel so worthless, that all you could do was go out into the world and be the man he said you were."
"Why are you doing this?" Angel looked close to breaking point, the anguish in his eyes almost too much for her to bear.
"Because you're my brother and I love you. Because you've lived for more than two centuries under the misapprehension that our father was right about you. But he wasn't. God rest his soul, he wasn't. You're a good man, Angel. You could have been a great man back then, had he let you. But you're more than making up for it now. And that's the man that Cordelia sees when she looks at you. Not the wild, scoundrel of a man that father bullied you into becoming. But the noble man with a good heart that you are now. And always were, deep down."
Angel slumped down on the curb, overwhelmed by her words. "I have nothing to offer her, Kathy," he said. "She deserves –"
"She deserves to be with the man she loves. Who loves her. Above and beyond that is just something you'll have to figure out as you go."