Chapter 2
Authors: Katherine Dimmick & Ellen
Rating: NC-17 (overall story)
Spoilers: Season 1
Summary: A retelling of the episode "She" as it might have happened in the Power of Three universe.
Disclaimer: We don't own any of these characters, or the basic plot of the episode "She," written by David Greenwalt and Marti Noxon, from which this story is adapted. Angel, Doyle, Cordelia, Wesley et al. are the property of Joss Whedon's Mutant Enemy Productions, 20th Century Fox and/or The WB.
Thoughts between Angel, Doyle and Cordelia are marked //like this.//
St. Matthew's Hospital was a hive of activity as Angel walked hurriedly towards the desk located at the neuropsychiatric ward, where the nurse had said they had Cordelia. The link between them was almost gone and the only way he knew that she was nearby was if he stopped and really concentrated on the tenuous bond that still flowed between them.
The tether that anchored his soul was beginning to fray.
"I'm looking for Cordelia Chase," he said as he approached the desk. Just as the nurse was about to answer a scream rang out from the room at the end of the hall. As it echoed through his head, Angel ran to the room, the nurse yelling out behind him that the doctor was with her.
The door to the room loomed closer and as he entered the sight made him stop dead in his tracks. Cordelia was lying on the bed, machines hooked up to her chest, her temples. Three nurses were trying to hold her still while the doctor was trying to insert a drip into the top of her right hand. A nurse held up her hand in front of him as he tried to enter the room fully to hold his lover.
"Are you family?" she asked, looking at him as though he was the enemy.
Angel just nodded as he walked quietly over to the bed. She was writhing in pain and Angel knew the pain that she must be feeling. He had seen that look on both Doyle's face and hers before and he knew that it must almost be killing her.
"I've tried a couple of drugs to calm her but so far none of them have helped," the doctor told Angel as he reached the bed. "Does she have a history of mental illness?" Angel just shook his head as he looked at Cordelia. "I'm afraid that she might die if we can't sedate her," the doctor informed him.
He reached out slowly and took her hand. Almost at once, Cordelia stopped moving and lay still on the bed. The doctor looked on, amazed, as the touch of this man did something that the powerful drugs could not.
Faintly, spinning images flashed rapidly through Angel's mind, much too fast to absorb, along with piercing stabs of agony. Angel wished that he could defend Cordelia somehow from it, wished that he could enter her mind and fight off the visions for her. But he could do nothing except to hold her hand, to try to share a little of the pain.
"Cordelia, can you hear me?" he asked her as he stood at the side of the bed. He already knew the answer to that question. There was no way that she could hear him with vision after vision crowding through her head. Angel sat in the chair offered to him by a nurse, still holding Cordelia's hand. It was at that moment, his head bent low, that he felt Doyle leave the link.
Angel arrived back at the office the same time as a huge explosion erupted and the office was engulfed by a fireball that threw Angel backwards as he was approaching.
"Doyle," he murmured as he ran frantically into the burning building searching out his friend and lover. He called the Irishman's name over and over until he found him, lying unconscious at the foot of the stairs.
As he touched Doyle, he could feel, dimly, that Doyle's mind was no longer with his body. Doyle's consciousness had gone somewhere else, to be with Cordelia.
At least he was still alive. Angel was determined to keep him that way.
Slinging Doyle over his shoulders fireman style, he carried the limp body of his lover up to the street, where the awaiting ambulance retrieved him and took him to St. Matthew's Hospital, sirens wailing.
Unshed tears formed in his eyes as he walked over to the car, preparing to follow the speeding ambulance to the hospital.
Doyle was admitted and taken straight to the ICU. Angel didn't even get a chance to see him before they hooked him up to machines to monitor his heart rate, his breathing and other things.
This was not supposed to happen, Angel thought as he stood looking at Doyle through the glass. First Cordelia and now Doyle. And where was Wesley? Surely it hadn't taken that long to find a book.
Shoulders slumped, feeling as though the weight of the world rested upon his shoulders, Angel slowly walked away from the silent figure of Doyle towards the stairs. It was time to return to Cordelia. She had calmed down as soon as he had touched her. The bond was still there.
He knew that it was, because his soul was still there, too... but, for how much longer?
Doyle fought his way through dizzying flashes, one image following another, carried on waves of nauseating pain. He could hear Cordelia screaming.
He wanted to scream, too. He wanted to run from the incredible pain, from the whirling images, wanted to disappear into the tempting darkness.
Instead, he kept pushing forward, trying to reach Cordelia.
//Hang on, princess,// he called out, not sure if she could hear him. //Hold on, darlin', I'm with you. I'm here.//
The shrill whistle of a cell phone invaded Angel's thoughts. He had never had to use this thing but Cordelia had wanted him to get it. This was before they had brought Doyle back into their lives. She hadn't wanted to lose him as well.
"Hello," he said quietly into the mouthpiece.
"Angel, where are you?" Wesley's voice asked. "I'm standing where our office should be. What happened?"
"Doyle and Cordelia are in St. Matthew's Hospital," Angel replied walking into Cordelia's room. "Doyle's in ICU and Cordelia is in the neuropsychiatric ward."
"I'll be there as soon as I can," Wesley replied before ringing off.
"I'm going to fix this, love," Angel vowed to Cordelia, holding her hand tight in his. "I need you back, I need you both."
It was then that he noticed a black mark on her hand. It looked like a symbol of some sort.
//Doyle, I'm not sure you can hear this,// he sent. //But I have to go to the oracles. I promise I'll be back. Wesley is on his way. Hold on till I get back.//
He wasn't sure but he thought that he could sense a faint response, almost drowned out by pain.
//Don't be too long. I don't know how much more of this we can take.//
