Chapter 13


Author:   Ellen
Rating:   NC-17  (overall story)
Spoilers:   none
Summary:   Angel, Cordelia and Doyle begin to realize some of the further implications of their bond.

Disclaimer:   The characters of Angel, Doyle and Cordelia are the property of 20th Century Fox, Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy and others.  No ownership is claimed and no copyright infringement is intended.

Thoughts between Angel, Doyle and Cordelia are marked //like this.//






There were still a few shops left open in Keswick that catered to the tourist trade and Cordelia had no trouble locating a tourist guidebook to the stone circles of Britain, since the Castlerigg circle was one of the area's main claims to fame.

The Beacon circle was not so famous but as she stood in the shop skimming through the guidebook, she was able to find a reference that was not much more than a footnote.

//OK, it's near something called Knapperthaw farm, wherever that is.  It's not like this circle, it's a ruined one, all the stones are broken and scattered.//

//Directions,// Doyle sent impatiently from the car outside.

//I'm on it,// she sent back, approaching the shopkeeper with a smile.

A few minutes later, she was out and back in the car again, with directions.  //Less than an hour's drive, he says.//

Other than the driving directions, there was no more conversation, whether spoken or otherwise.  In the back seat, Angel kept his arms around Cordelia, lending her a little of his strength as he felt her weariness and she leaned back gratefully into his embrace.  He rested his cheek against her hair and they watched the road, as Cordelia quietly passed along the directions to Doyle.

This location was even more isolated than the one before and it was more difficult to figure out where to park once they arrived.

//How are we supposed to find them in the dark, if the stones are all broken?// Cordelia queried, sharing the image of the picture she had seen in the tourist guidebook.

She tried not to add, //If they're here.//  But the thought slipped through.

//They'll be in the cleared area, where the stones used to be, where the good view is.//  Doyle found a more or less acceptable place to leave the car and was out the driver's side door and walking before Angel and Cordelia had their legs out of the back.

//Good view of what?// Cordelia sent sourly as she hurried to follow.  //Constellations?  Cows?//






Angel sent, //Someone is here.//  He opened his senses to Cordelia so that she could pick up the distant voices, outside the range of her own hearing.

They moved as quietly as they could, Doyle still leading but Angel close behind and Cordelia drawing just enough from Angel to be able to keep up.  It was so dark that if she relied totally on her own senses, she would have been unable to see where she was going.  Doyle had closed himself down so tightly that she couldn't even feel his presence.

As they moved closer to the cleared area, they could see the faint flicker of lights.  At first, it looked like a fire but as they drew nearer, the flicker resolved itself into individual flames.

Candles.  The people, or whatever they were, were standing in a circle, holding candles.

The soft murmur of voices seemed casual, too formless to be part of a ritual.  //It sounds like people just chatting with each other,// Cordelia pointed out.  //Kind of like a party, only quieter.  Maybe they haven't started the spell or chant or whatever yet.//

//That's what I'm getting too,// Angel responded.

Despite Doyle's block, a flash of emotion came through to them, which was quickly suppressed.

//Doyle?// Angel sent.  //What did you just get?//

//She's here,// Doyle sent back briefly and then withdrew.

//Don't shut us out,// Angel pleaded with him through the link but Doyle did not answer.

There was the sound of soft laughter as they approached the circle and then a voice called out:

"If you're here, Francis dear, there's no need to hide.  They told me that you'd find me."

There was no fear in the warm voice, Angel noted and he could smell no fear anywhere in the circle.  There was nothing in her tone but tenderness and amusement.

Abandoning stealth, Doyle stepped forward toward the circle of candles, as the woman moved out of her place in the circle and held up her candle a little closer to her face.  He didn't need the faint light of the candle to recognize her.

"How could you?" Doyle asked his mother harshly as he closed the gap between them.

As his hands went out to seize his mother's shoulders, he caught the ripple of movement in the circle behind her, as the others bowed low, some dropping to their knees.

"Promised One.  Welcome."

"And your friends, they are welcome too."

"Nobody bows down to me," Doyle snapped at them, then grabbed his mother by the arm.  "You're not a prisoner, are you?"

"No."

"How could you disappear without a word, then?  How could you do that to your family, your friends?"

"To you?"

"To me."

"You wouldn't want to hear about it, any more than I did.  You wouldn't want to know."

Dolores Doyle sighed and holding her candle carefully aside, gave her son a quick hug.  He did not return it.  He stood rigidly, staring at her angrily.

"You let me, let the family, believe something terrible happened to you," he accused.  "How could you do that?"

"I had a message.  I couldn't have told you, or anyone else, about it, dear.  The message would have meant nothing to anyone else but me."

"A message?  Do you mean that thing you were wearing at work until you found out what it was?"

"That was the first part of the message, yes.  But there was more."  She sighed.  "I just found out something that changed everything, you see.  I made a terrible mistake, close to thirty years ago."

"Yes, you did, didn't you?  You conceived me."

"That wasn't the mistake, Francis.  Don't go twisting my words.  That was no mistake at all."

"What, then?"

"I thought that I'd been part of a killing, you see.  I thought I'd been responsible for a death."

"What?"

At Doyle's look, Dolores shook her head.  "No, not all by myself and I didn't do the killing but I thought I'd been part of one, just the same."  She sighed.  "And the worst part of it is, I let that guilt shadow your life, as well as mine."

"I don't understand."  As Doyle stood facing his mother, Angel and Cordelia quietly came up to stand behind him, one at either side.

They didn't touch him, or speak but Doyle could feel their presence behind him, lending their silent support.

In the darkness around them, the circle of figures holding their candles stood back, keeping a respectful silence.  Cordelia couldn't tell how many were human and how many were demons.

//They mean him no harm,// Angel reassured her.

//I know.  Neither does his mother,// Cordelia sent back.  //That doesn't mean she won't hurt him again.//

"Shame is a terrible thing, Francis.  I spent close to thirty years believing I had blood on my hands and that I had been part of an evil thing, the taking of a life.  I tried to hide from my own guilt but you know, it never lets you go.  But I ran and I hid and I kept on running for the last near-on-to-thirty years."

Dolores chuckled dryly.  "I ran so fast and I hid so deep that I wouldn't listen to anyone who could have told me the truth, who could have explained that I didn't understand what I had seen."

"What are you talking about?"

"I had a message, you see and it said he was alive.  They'd been trying to tell me that for years but I wouldn't listen."

"That he was alive?  You mean, that I was alive?"

"No, by then I already knew they'd brought you back.  I don't mean you, although it truly is all about you, in the end.  But it would never have occurred to me that he could have survived.  Yet, if you could come back, why wasn't it possible?"

"Why wasn't what possible?"

"When you were conceived, Francis – "

Doyle flinched away as his mother reached toward him and she let her hand drop to her side.

"We don't need to talk about that," he said roughly but she shook her head.

"No, I need to tell you, finally.  That's the only way that I can make you understand, how wrong I was and what I did to you and to myself all these years, with a guilt that was needless."

He was silent and she went on, the only sound in the silence that surrounded them.

"I was so young and so proud to be part of something wonderful, something important.  I knew that he would not be human but I knew that you would be a child of destiny and they assured me that you would be beautiful.  They were right about that, you know.  You were."

"Go on, if you must."  Doyle's voice was tight with anger.

"I only knew him for less than a day.  At first I thought he was ugly but after an hour or two, I had forgotten why I ever thought so.  He had a smile like yours and a voice like music.  He told me that his name meant 'tree' in some language or other, not his own.  In his own language, he said, it meant something not nearly so pleasant.  He made me laugh.  While he was talking to me, I forgot all about being nervous.  He was gentle and he made it easy for me."

"I don't need to hear this."

"Oh but you do.  You see, I thought that I knew what the ritual was.  I knew what I was expected to do.  But I didn't expect what happened next, at the standing stones, after your father and I..."

"Just go on.  I know how babies come into the world, Mother.  I don't need to hear it and neither do all of these people here listening to us.  Just finish it."

"When he moved away from me, they all came back.  They had gone off to the side a bit, you understand, to give us some privacy, before.  They all returned and they spoke of the sacrifice, of one life given to bring another.  I'd heard the words before but I thought it all symbolic, winter turning to spring, the old year dying to bring in the new, the turn of the seasons."

"Is there some point to all this?"

She went on quietly, "They asked him if he was willing to give up his life to bring the new life, the life of the Promised One and he said yes.  He knelt down and I heard the crack.  It was the most horrible sound I had ever heard in my life."

In the faint, flickering light of the candle, her face was deeply shadowed by remembered shock.  "You see, I thought it was only a symbolic sacrifice.  That was the way they explained the ritual to me.  I never thought they'd really kill him."

She shook her head sadly.  "I still didn't want to believe it, even when I heard that sound.  But when I looked, he was lying there, so still, with his head all twisted back and his neck broken and I screamed.  And I kept screaming and then I ran away."

Dolores met her son's eyes, as the words she had suppressed for so long came tumbling out at last.  "Do you understand now, Francis, how I could never talk to you about it?  Once when you were small, you asked me if you could ever meet your father.  I told you that your father was dead and you asked me if I was sure.  Do you remember that?"

"Yes."

"I said that I was very sure and I told you never to ask me again.  I couldn't tell you that I knew it because I was right there when they killed him and I didn't stop them."

She sighed.  "So I ran and kept running.  I wouldn't speak to any of the others after that.  They kept sending me messages to meet them, out at the stones at night but I wouldn't go.  I wouldn't return their phone calls, I tore up their letters unopened.  How could I trust them after that?  I had never intended to be part of a real killing.  They tried to tell me I was wrong, that I didn't understand but I saw what I saw.  I heard what I heard.  And even if he wasn't human, he might as well have been, because he was kind to me.  So, once I was sure that my innocent child wasn't going to show the marks of what I'd done, I went home, to spend the rest of my life pretending that I hadn't watched my child's father murdered in front of my eyes."

Doyle whispered, "But, he was a Brachen..."

"Yes.  I knew so little, Francis, but I was very young and I was very sure of what I thought I'd seen.  Just the thought of him made me feel like a murderer.  I had touched something beautiful and then, I had helped to destroy it."

"But, if he..."

"Yes.  You take your stubbornness from me, you know and I wasn't going to listen to anything from anyone.  All the years since then, all the time when I was feeling like something evil and tainted forever and making you feel that way, too, because I did, it was all because I wouldn't listen."

"Do you mean...?"

She went on, as though unable to stop, her eyes shining with a hint of tears in the candlelight.  "In just the few hours that I'd known him, you see, I had already started to love him.  And then I became part of his death and I didn't even want to think about it any more.  So I wouldn't think about it.  I wouldn't talk about it.  I pretended that none of it had ever happened.  I let the family think that I'd just gotten myself into trouble in the normal way and been left behind in the usual course of things, like so many girls before me.  I took my guilt and my shame and my grief and I stuffed them all down deep and let them color my whole life and yours."

"Are you saying...?" Doyle could not finish the sentence.

Dolores nodded.  "Yes.  All this time, I was so wrong and I would never let them tell me.  Until you came back, I would never allow myself to believe them.  But then, they contacted me again and because of what had happened to you, I decided that this time, I would hear them out.  This time, I would listen.  After all, my son was alive again.  Nothing was impossible."

She half-laughed, softly, as she reached out to touch his cheek.  This time he did not move away but stood very still, staring at her, as her fingers brushed his face.

"What kind of message could I leave for the family to explain such a thing as that?  What could I have written, Francis?  That I'd gone off to find out if, just maybe, I was not really a killer after all?  That I'd gone off to find the truth about someone that I'd been lying to them about, day in and day out, for almost thirty years?  Someone who wasn't even human?  I don't think our granda would have understood that sort of a note, do you?"

"You could have let me know."

"Ah but you were the worst of my guilt, you see.  You were my true miracle, the one good thing brought forth out of my folly and I let you grow up not knowing it.  Worse than that, I let you grow up feeling like a child of shame, when you should have had the chance to be proud of who you are."

Doyle's eyes had not left his mother's face since she began to speak, so Angel was the first to see the other figure drawing nearer to them.  Cordelia saw it in his mind and her own eyes turned in that direction, as she and Angel both moved protectively closer to Doyle.

The tall figure stopped next to Dolores.  He was not carrying a candle and even looking through Angel's eyes, Cordelia could not make out his face in the darkness.  Even so, she didn't need to see his face, as he touched Dolores lightly on the shoulder and she turned toward him.

Cordelia could feel the realization rising up within Doyle, his mental shields fraying and falling away, as his mother smiled at the demon beside her.

"Francis, this is Alon, your father."

"No."  Doyle shook his head frantically.  "No, it can't be.  No."

Angel and Cordelia were there to catch him as he fell.