Chapter Two

He hadn't been able to leave her. Was it because the Powers wouldn't let him leave, or because he wouldn't let himself?

It had been months. He knew that it would be easier on them if Angel and Cordelia could forget him. He had hoped that Angel, at least, would be able to sense his presence, but if Angel did, he was unwilling to accept it as real.

He couldn't move physical things yet. Sometimes he could move energy, but that didn't seem to accomplish much. And, sometimes he could reach Cordelia in her dreams. It was one of the first things he had learned, to spy on her dreams of picket fences, and her nightmares of his scream.

He could feel the loneliness in her dreams, the pull of her silent wondering, in sleep, what might have been. He was held by the way that she remembered the little things about him that she had hardly noticed when he was alive... even the way he "smelled funny sometimes." He could feel how very close they had been to finding each other.

And then he had to watch helplessly as her dreams turned into nightmares. He had to watch himself die again, through her eyes.

If this wasn't hell, it was surely close enough. He was the ghost and yet, he was the one who was haunted.

This was the one thing he had longed for ever since that night on the Quintessa, to finally be on the same plane. Here, they were the same. He was almost close enough to touch her face, her hair. He could whisper in her ear, like all the times he had tried fruitlessly to comfort her as she cried herself to sleep.

But now she could see him, maybe even hear him. If he could just get past this damn wall.

He could pound on the invisible barrier again and again until his hands were numb, he could call her name until his throat was raw. He could not reach her.

He called to God for mercy and yet expected nothing. This limbo was nothing more than he deserved - his final act had spared him from hell, but it seemed like heaven didn't want him either.

Sweet merciful Mary, he thought, she deserved none of this. None of it.

He didn't know what else to think, as he fell back into the beliefs of his childhood. What else did he have left to believe in?

He watched in confusion and desperation as his princess, the one who kept him anchored to the material world, argued with the vampire. When he saw what appeared in Drusilla's hand, he froze.

He had always been able to recognize magical objects, even when he looked at them through human eyes, and here the light that poured from the vial in the vampire's grip was far brighter than it would ever have been on earth.

The water of life.

He knew what it was. He knew what it cost. And he knew that Cordelia didn't have the slightest clue about the trap that was opening up before her.

"Nooo! Cordelia, don't do this! I'm not worth it, God help me! Cordelia!"

He repeated it over and over like a litany, but it wasn't any use. She couldn't hear him. That's when he began to curse God and himself.

Maybe the Powers would send him off to hell after all, and spare her. But nothing changed.

"Angel." He whispered. "Somehow I have to tell Angel. I have to get him to hear me this time."

He locked eyes with Cordelia. He refused to leave while she was looking at him that way. Finally she turned her head with a very recognizable look of determination.

He saw her lips move. "I will," she said, and then she flickered before his eyes and was gone.

And Drusilla turned toward him and laughed.

He placed his palm against the wall and tried to pass through it as he had done with so many in the recent past. This time he failed. Where Cordelia had gone, he could not follow, at least not yet.

"I'm not worth it," he whispered once more before he left.

He willed himself to the office and watched as Angel came in. Something felt wrong, there was danger near. Very near.

"Angel, man, am I glad t' see you." But Angel passed through him, unseeing, as he walked down the steps.

"I will never get used t' that."

He saw the scroll in Angel's hand and watched helplessly as he rolled it up, put it in the canister and locked it in the cabinet.

"No, Angel! Cordelia needs that. She needs you! Angel! Hear me! Angel! See me!"

Angel stopped and looked right at him.

"I'm still here, bud. Hear me. Please!"

Angel turned away, and Doyle sank further into despair.

When the phone rang, it startled them both.

"It's about Cordelia..."

Doyle felt something move closer to them as Angel picked up the phone.

"Hello?" Angel answered.

Doyle looked around and spotted the demon, but it couldn't see him, and Angel couldn't see it. The demon seemed to want it that way.

"Yeah, what happened to her? I'm her employer."

Doyle moved beside Angel.

"She doesn't have any family in town. What happened?"

"Don't leave the scroll." Doyle whispered in Angel's ear.

"I'm on my way." Angel said and then he hung up the phone.

"The scroll!!" Doyle screamed as he helplessly watched Angel grab his coat and run out the door.

"It's going to get the scroll! Cordelia needs it!"

There was nothing he could do but follow Angel as the demon took Cordelia's only hope.

Angel ran to the nurse's station as soon as he got into the hospital. "I'm looking for Cordelia Chase."

"This way, Angel," Doyle said in vain.

The nurse looked at her chart. "She's uhh...the doctor's with her if you'd just have a seat over there."

Angel heard Cordelia's bloodcurdling screams begin anew. He found himself running toward her, still unaware of his invisible companion.

"Wait." The nurse called. "You have to let the doctor handle this."

Angel didn't listen. He barrelled into Cordelia's room, only to be hindered by the doctor. "Hey, you can't be in here."

"What happened?"

Doyle went immediately to Cordelia's side but couldn't comfort her as he ached to do. He heard the doctor behind him. "Are you family?"

"Yes!" was Angel's answer as he too moved to stand beside Cordelia, unaware that he stood in the exact spot Doyle occupied.

Cordelia never stopped screaming. Doyle put his hand above her head and closed his eyes, following her to where she was. He had done this so many times before.

As soon as he did it this time he regretted it. He knew now why she was screaming. Vision after vision bombarded him through her. He saw an explosion and flames, and that Brit who worked for Angel, right in the middle of it. He saw five captive vampires, a huge box with a small barred window, and the masked demon who had been at Angel's, holding the scroll.

And then there were all the other faces and voices, all crying out in pain, all at the same time.

No wonder her mind had fled somewhere else. Vaguely, he heard the doctor and Angel's voices, as so much background noise.

"They brought her in a few hours ago. Does she have a history of mental illness?"

"No."

"Does she use drugs?"

"No."

"Well, she's having a psychotic episode. We've done a CAT scan, there's no organic damage that we can see, but we can't seem to sedate her."

There was so much pain in the room that Doyle could hardly stand it. He tried to put himself between Cordelia and the pain, but he couldn't block it from her body. Even worse, he couldn't block it from her mind. It passed through him as though he wasn't there at all. He feared he wasn't strong enough.

"Oh god, darlin', I'm so sorry," he whispered, knowing that she couldn't hear him.

Angel took Cordelia's head in his hands gently. How Doyle envied him at that moment of contact. "Cordelia, can you hear me? Cordelia?"

Cordelia never stopped screaming. Doyle knew that she couldn't hear anything.

"Cordelia!" Angel demanded.

"We're trying a number of different drug therapies. Do you know if she has any drug allergies?"

"I don't think so. Drugs won't help her."

"Well, something better...."

Doyle lost the rest of what the doctor said in the sound of Cordelia's screams. Not being able to help her, and knowing that he had opened her to this torment - it was more than he could take.

"I'd give anythin' to take this back from you, princess. Anythin' at all."

Despising himself for a coward, he willed himself back to the office, and waited. He was there and watching as Wesley came in and opened the cabinet. He knew Wesley well by now, even though he had never met him. After months of observing what happened in the office, there wasn't much Doyle didn't know about the man.

He knew that Wesley mattered to Angel, and to Cordelia. He was their friend. That made him Doyle's concern, whether he liked it or not.

They saw the explosive device at the same moment. Wesley backed away, but there was no time.

Using every skill he had learned in the past few months, Doyle tried to shield Wesley by deflecting the force of the blast away from him. He was able to divert the energy away from Wesley to some extent, but not completely. Enough of the explosion leaked through, despite Doyle's awkward attempt to shelter him, to toss Wesley violently to the floor.

But in that moment, when Doyle used his own energy to block some of the concussive force of the blast, something happened. As the diminished force of the explosion, and Doyle's leaking shield, both slammed into Wesley, something.... connected.

He was in. He was inside Wesley's mind.

And Wesley was going down fast, down into a black spiral that Doyle knew all too well.

"Oh no, you don't, damn you. You're not going to leave them too, I won't allow it. They need you, man."

Without hesitation, Doyle followed Wesley's mind as it faded from the earthly plane and went ... elsewhere. What did he have to risk? After all, he was dead already.

And Wesley was... almost dead.

"Not quite."

"What?"

Wesley was standing, or thought he was standing, in the middle of a dark room. Ahead of him, there was a shaft of light, and he moved toward it.

"No, man. Don't go there."

"What?"

"I said, ye're not quite dead yet, man. You still have a chance. Don't let go, fight it!"

"And who are you?"

Wesley turned slowly, away from the tempting light ahead, back to the figure in the shadows behind him.

"You can't die yet, Pryce."

"Wyndham-Pryce, not Pryce."

"Whatever! Cordelia and Angel need you. You gotta stay alive, man. Angel won't be able to save Cordelia without you. And if he loses both of you, he won't even be able to save himself."

Through the shadows, Wesley began to see the face before him. It was vaguely familiar in the way that someone seen on television might be familiar, like a face that he had seen only on a videotape, and that only once, by accident.

"Do I know you?"

"No, but I know you, and I know Angel an' Cordelia. I know you're their friend. So was I. There's no more time to explain, man. Cordelia needs help. I can't show you unless you agree to come with me."

"If you'd just kindly explain..."

"That'd take too long. We have to go now. There's gonna be a lot for you to know an' remember."

"I'm going absolutely nowhere until I ascertain exactly where I am and what situation has befallen me."

"I wondered if you'd be a pompous ass even half-dead. Guess I have my answer now, eh?"

And then, suddenly, Wesley knew ... and even in his disembodied state, he felt chilled.

He was talking to a dead man, and not just any dead man.... the one whose long shadow had been over him for months. The one whose name they never spoke, except by mistake.

"Doyle."