TITLE: All The Lies I'd Never Said
AUTHOR: Ragna (writinggoddess@aol.com)
RATING: FRT
CLASSIFICATION: Cordelia/Doyle musings
SPOILERS: All of "Angel"
DISTRIBUTION: Slay This, other sites with my fic up. Everyone else just keep my name on it and let me know.
DISCLAIMER: If you don't recognize it, chances are it's my own creation. If you do, Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, Kazui Sandollar, FOX and the WB own it or them. I'm just holding Spike hostage. Carolyn's got Xander, May's got Oz, Cathryn's got Ethan, Shelly has Angel, and Gillian has Doyle. You may see them by appointment only. Each title contains a lyric from Four Star Mary's "Run."
FEEDBACK: Sorry I'm not home right now I'm walking in the spiderwebs so leave a message and I'll call you back...in other words, I want it. Don't care if it's onlist or not.
AUTHOR'S NOTES: Caro wants more fic, Caro gets more fic. Still dedicated to Mids, who helped me with a storyline earlier today. Thanksies!

***

She dreamed about his last moments every night. It wasn't something she could help. And every night she would wake up in a sweat, her pulse racing and a scream escaping her lips.

This night, almost a week after she started reading the letter, she couldn't sleep for more than an hour or two without dreaming and screaming.

She turned on the lamp on the night stand, reaching over for the next part of the letter.

She hadn't read any more since the time in the stairwell; it had just been too hard. Not only could she not bear to read anymore, they'd gotten many new clients, most of them demons who has heard about Doyle's sacrifice.

She got up, going into the kitchen with the note in her hand, making herself some tea. Once she had teased Giles about drinking it all the time; now she found it was a comfort.

***

The tea steeped in her mug from the office. It had been one of Doyle's, and she didn't want to leave it there in his apartment. It stayed with her. It was simple; dark blue with a black rim, nothing fancy.

She pulled the tea bag out, tossing it in the sink as she left the kitchen, making her way to the living room and her favorite chair. Opening the letter, she traced more of his writing before beginning to read again.

"Princess, there are a million things I've done wrong. Some of them you obviously know, most of them you could only guess about. And I was an awful liar, too. There's a lot you don't know about me, so I thought I'd tell you.

My full name really is Alan Francis Doyle. My mother was human; my father, who I never met, was a Brachen. Basically, a spiky green demon with visions. Lovely, no? I didn't even know I was half demon till I was twenty-one.

I grew up in Ireland, which is a beautiful country. Ask Angel about it sometime. It was hard...basically me and my mother, when she wasn't hitting the whiskey bottle. She was a kind woman, though. I didn't get the impression she knew how to be a mother, but at least she tried.

I started to travel, and I went all over the world. It was an interesting time in my life. You know Harry, you know about that part of my life. I loved her very much...I still do, in a way. Now, though, it's more in a friendly way. It was all my fault the marriage fell apart, and then everything else fell apart too.

I lost my job. I really loved my students, and I loved teaching. Maybe if I'd settled down, later, I could have gone back to teaching. I would have liked that. But I started drinking, something I don't highly recommend. I gambled, I went into debt...suffice to say, I ruined my life.

And then the visions started being even more specific, having meaning behind them, and one of the first was of Angel. And of you. So I did get a sort of second chance. Maybe I should have done a lot of things differently; I still would have died, maybe just later."

The bleak and abrupt way that part of the letter ended almost brought Cordelia to tears again.

"I can't...keep...crying," she said to herself through clenched teeth, shutting her eyes again. She opened them, then noticed water marks on the paper. Not fresh, either; rather, they'd been dried quite a while.

He cried on the letter, she thought to herself, and she started to wonder why.

***

The chair had provided her with her first decent night of sleep in almost two weeks. The ghost crept over towards her, pulling on a blanket. In the morning she'd probably think her poltergeist roommate had done it.

He couldn't sit, and was always standing. But he never felt tired. Not at all. He was also bewildered.

He remembered the light, remembered their first and last kiss, remembered punching Angel out, remembered jumping on the contraption to save everyone...remembered the pain.

The blinding pain had coursed through his body, until the pain numbed him so much that it went away.

And then there was darkness.

And just as suddenly, he was on the deck, watching Angel lead a distraught Cordy away from the ship. And then he appeared in the office, watching them. At first he thought he was still going to be helping them.

And then when Angel drove her home, he was there, and he watched her. And he hadn't left her side since.

But now...he was afraid she would never move on, and he was pretty sure that was why he was always watching her. To help her.

As she had helped him.