Title: Children of the Grave
Author: Lilyana_vamp
Posted: 05-05-2003
Email: lilyana_vamp@yahoo.com
Rating: NC-17
Category: Angst
Content: C/A
Summary: Sequel to "The Horror of Amusement"
Spoilers: None
Disclaimer: The characters in the Angelverse were created by Joss Whedon & David Greenwalt. No infringement is intended, no profit is made.
Distribution:
Notes:
Feedback:Part 1: Gone Again
She ran through the doors of the five star hotel and screamed for help. She ran for the elevator as the doors began to slide shut. “No! Please! Let me in! Help me!” She banged frantically at the closed, metal doors, but no one headed her pleas. They all passed her off as the crazy pregnant lady.
“Cordelia, I’m not going to hurt you. I want to help.”
“The way you helped before? I don’t need that kind of help!” she snapped and tried to run past him. The pain in her abdomen betrayed her, throwing her into his arms.
“What are you doing here?”
“That doesn’t matter right now. You need a hospital. You’re bleeding.” He scooped her up and walked out of the busy hotel, virtually un-noticed.
***
“You’ve called all of the hospitals?”
“Yes,” Fred nodded sadly.
“Are you sure? There are a lot in the area. Maybe you missed one.”
“Angel, we’ve called them all. Our police contacts are aware of the situation and keeping their eyes out for her.”
Angel sighed and collapsed into his chair. The days of searching for the woman he loved and his unborn child were beginning to catch up with him.
“She has to be somewhere. I have to find her.”
“She’ll come back when she’s ready. Give her time Angel,” Wesley tried to reason.
“I can’t give her time Wes. Something’s wrong and she needs help.”
Wesley nodded and looked toward the door. “Well, hopefully something will turn up soon. If she’s as in danger as you sense, I pray that she seeks help, if not in us, in someone else.”
***
He carried her into the hospital and called for help. “Please, she needs a doctor!”
“What happened Sir?”
“I’m not sure. She’s pregnant. When I saw her, I noticed she’d been bleeding.” He motioned to the dark red covering her pants. “She could hardly stand.”
“What’s her name?”
“Cordelia Chase.”
“Are you family of Ms. Chase?”
“No, I’m…I’m an acquaintance.”
“We need to contact her family.”
“The only person you could call is…”
“Who Sir?” As the nurse questioned him, the medical personnel took her from his arms and rushed her into a room. “We need to know who to contact Sir.”
“I have to go.” He turned and walked back out of the hospital.
***
“I just can’t wait around here!”
“What are you going to do? Run out into the sun? Don’t think you’d do Barbie much good as a Crispy Critter.”
“Gunn, you don’t understand—“
“Yeah, I do Angel. I want to find and help Cordy too, but I don’t think the answer’s going to come knocking on the door…” Gunn trailed off at the sound of banging. “Okay, I stand corrected.”
Angel bolted for the door and threw it open. His eyes narrowed at the man who stood before him. “Tell me what the hell you’re doing here!” he growled and grabbed the man by the throat, slamming him against the door.
“Cor…delia…” the man gasped.
Angel tightened his grip. “What have you done to her? Tell me or lose your other hand.”
***
Angel looked at Lindsey McDonald with skepticism. “You expect me to believe that you just happened to be there when Cordy needed to be taken to the hospital? You seemed to send her to the hospital an awful lot.”
Lindsey rubbed his neck gently and looked seriously at the extremely pissed off vampire. “Look, I don’t expect you to be okay with my story, but I do expect you to go to Cordelia. She’s in trouble and she needs the people she loves. That’s you Angel.”
“Last time I checked, she didn’t want to be anywhere near me.” Angel looked at her desk longingly. “She didn’t even want to be carrying my child.”
“The baby’s…yours?” Lindsey looked at Wesley in disbelief. “How can that be?”
“We’ve been asking ourselves a lot lately.”
“What was wrong with Cordy, when you took her to the hospital?” Fred asked.
“She’d been bleeding and she was weak. She could hardly stand up. She did make a valid attempt at running from me though,” Lindsey pointed out, impressed by her strength.
“Well, can you blame her, given your past?” Wesley stared at the ex-lawyer sternly.
“No, I can’t. But I swear I was just trying to help her. She…she didn’t look good. I’ve never seen her like that.”
“You obviously didn’t see her when you put her in the hospital the first time,” Angel growled at the man who sat on his couch. “I don’t like this one bit. I don’t care if you don’t work for Wolfram & Hart anymore or not. I don’t trust you.”
“Like I said, I don’t expect you to.”
“Shut up. If you caused one bit of harm to Cordelia, I will cut off your other hand, and I won’t stop there. I’ll continue with each of your body parts until I rip out your miserable heart. Are we clear?”
Lindsey looked up at the vampire and swallowed hard. “Crystal.”
***
Angel met the others in the lobby of the large hospital. “Did you find out where she is?”
“Yes, she’s in the…” Wesley began.
“Where? Where is she Wesley?”
“She’s in the Intensive Care Unit. Angel! There’s something you should…” Wesley trailed off when he realized Angel wasn’t listening; he was well on his way to Cordelia’s bedside.
Angel ran from the group and to the elevator. As he got to ICU, a nurse attempted to stop him. “Sir, you can’t go in there. Only family is allowed. I’ll have to ask you to show some ID.”
“I don’t have time for that! I need to see her!” He easily pushed past the small nurse and through the doors.
“Sir! I’ll have to call security!”
“That won’t be necessary Miss,” Wesley told her as he approached the station. “We are her family.
The woman looked at the group with her eyebrow raised. “An English guy, a black guy, a scrawny little twig, and a psycho. You’re her family?”
“We’re the best family you can get, and you’d better not try to keep us from her,” Gunn warned, but backed off as he felt Fred’s hand on his arm.
“We’re just worried about her.” She looked up as she heard the commotion from inside of the Unit. “That doesn’t sound good.”
***
*A few moments earlier*
Angel rushed to her bed and looked down at her. She was pale and still. He looked at the tubes and wires that were hooked up to her and felt his heart sink. It was worse than he imagined. He didn’t know how much worse though.
His eyes moved down to her stomach and he immediately sensed something was wrong. “No…” He spun around and grabbed the nearest attendant roughly. “Where is it?”
“Where is what?” the young man asked, his voice shaking uncontrollably.
“Where is my baby? What did you do to it?”
Part 2: From the Outside Looking In
He looked through the plastic barrier at the tiny life held within its walls. He could have held her with one hand, her arm barely the width of his finger. The nearly microscopic tubes that were fed through her body were her only thread of hope. He watched as her tiny chest rose and fell with the miracle that was life, but she barely clung to it. He touched the isolette, longing to hold his tiny baby, but he knew that was impossible.
“There’s nothing we can do now. To be honest, she doesn’t have a great chance. We just have to wait and see. Babies born this early just don’t have a very good prognosis,” the doctor told Wesley quietly, not wanting to upset Angel anymore than he already was.
Fred walked over and rested her hand on Angel’s shoulder. “She’s a fighter Angel. She’d have to be, ‘cause look at who her Mommy and Daddy are. No way a girl of Cordy’s is just gonna give up without a fight, and you know, she’s got the greatest champion for a father,” she told him quietly. “She won’t give up.”
“She can’t,” Angel whispered and caressed the plastic that held his baby girl. “She…she doesn’t even have a name yet. She can’t leave, not without a name.”
“She won’t leave at all Angel. Don’t think that way. You have to stay positive, for all of you. Now, what’s say we give this precious baby girl a name?”
Angel shook his head. “No, I won’t name her. Not without Cordy.”
“Yeah, she should be a part of the naming process,” Fred agreed quietly, hoping that her friend would wake up soon, for Angel’s sake.
“Besides, if we named her kid without her, she’d probably kick all of our asses,” Gunn joked, trying to lighten the mood a little.
Angel smiled slightly and kissed his baby through the plastic. “I’ll be back baby girl. Don’t you go anywhere. I have to go get your Mommy back.”
***
“Why?”
“There’s really no reason. Sometimes the body just rejects the pregnancy. It may be because of something going wrong with the baby, or it may be something wrong with her body. There really is no way to tell exactly why a baby is born prematurely. It just happens. It’s not anything anyone did, not in this case. She’s an extremely healthy woman with no signs of drug or alcohol use. Her body just began to shut down.” The doctor tried to be as comforting as possible, but Angel continued to look at Cordelia with a painfully concerned expression.
“Is she going to live?”
“The next twenty-four hours are critical. If she makes it through, then she has a good chance.”
“What about the baby?”
The doctor lowered her eyes. “The chances aren’t good. She was born too early. There are so many complications to contend with.”
“I don’t care how many complications there are. You do whatever you can for both of them. I don’t care what it costs. I want the best, even if you have to fly someone in from Timbuktu.” Angel didn’t give her a chance to speak; he walked to Cordy’s bed and took her hand in his own. “Cordy, please don’t leave us. That baby girl down the hall needs you. She’s fighting for her life, and you need to do the same. For her. And for me. I need you too Cor.” He rested his head on the pillow next to hers, oblivious to the tears that were soaking the crisp fabric beneath his face.
***
“Princess?” a voice called to her; it was a familiar voice. “Princess…” The voice persisted. “Princess!”
Cordy’s eyes snapped open and she was ready to jump on whoever was disrupting her nap, but she suppressed the outburst at the sight before her. “Doyle?”
“Hiya Princess.”
“Umm…are you alive or am I dead?” She looked around for any sign.
“Neither at the moment. I’m just here to help ya,” he answered, touching her face tenderly. “Oh, I’ve missed ya Princess.”
She smiled sadly, tears creeping into her eyes. “I’ve missed you too Doyle. It’s been so long since…”
“Ya can say it Princess. Since I died. I’m not hung up on it. I’m dead, I’ve moved on. Although, I could really go for a Guinness right about now. Ya know, there’s a real shortage of bars over here,” he winked, causing a laugh from the woman in front of him.
“Some things never change.”
“Aye,” he agreed and tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear. “And some things do. You’ve gotten even more beautiful Cordelia. Do ya have any idea how much I loved ya…how much I still do?”
She blushed and pulled away slightly. “So much has changed here…there…wherever. I’ve changed.”
“Ya have Princess. I loved you then and I love you now.”
“How could you d me then Doyle? I was shallow and petty and immature. I was a stupid little girl lost in the big city.”
“Nah, ya weren’t stupid. Just a little…well, you were lost, that’s for sure. But that’s not why I’m here, or why you’re here.”
“Then why?”
Doyle pointed behind her, and as she turned, the scene unfolded before her eyes. She saw the hospital room, and she saw herself lying virtually lifeless on the bed. And then she saw Angel, his head resting beside hers, his hand holding hers lovingly. He looked so devastated and alone.
“Angel…”
“He loves ya Princess, he really does. He would do anything for ya.”
Cordy felt her bottom lip begin to quiver, despite her refusal to cry for him. “You don’t know what he did to me Doyle. I love him too, but I don’t know if I can ever forgive him.”
“I do know Princess. But there’s something you’ve gotta know: that wasn’t your Angel. The Angel that did that to ya was the Angel of that dimension. Your Angel wasn’t the one.”
“But he, this Angel knew exactly what happened.”
“Aye, he does. He absorbed the other Angel’s memories when they linked so he could bring ya home. He opened himself the pain of knowing what had happened to ya to bring ya back to him, to your family, and he wouldn’t have had it any other way. He’d go through hell if it meant having ya near him.”
“I’ve put him through hell…”
“And he’d go through a thousand years of it for ya. You’re his soul, metaphorically of course.”
“Wow, you learned some big words after you died, now didn’t you?”
“Ya have a fancy toward comas, dontcha Princess?”
“It’s the only way I can get a decent night’s rest,” Cordy joked and then looked back at the scene. “What about the baby? What’s happened to my baby?”
“Come on, I’ll show ya.” Doyle led her through the hospital into the neonatal intensive care unit. It was nothing like Cordelia expected one to be. There were no babies crying. There were only the buzzing sounds of life-support machines and doctors and nurses moving about.
Doyle stopped her in front of one of the enclosed clear boxes that resembled Tupperware containers and pointed inside. “That’s your precious cargo Princess. All three pounds of her.”
Cordy felt the tears run down her cheeks as she tried to touch the isolette. “She’s so tiny.”
“Aye, that she is.” He looked at Cordy as she stared at the teeny baby. “What are ya thinking?”
“I…I don’t know.” She was fascinated by the sight before her. Her baby’s skin was translucent, her eyes were fused shut, and she was covered with furry hair. “She doesn’t look real.”
“I assure ya, she is. And ya have a decision to make Princess.”
Cordy peeled her eyes away from her daughter to look at Doyle. “What decision?”
“Do ya go home to your baby, to Angel, or do ya come with me?”
“Why do I have to make that decision? Isn’t that usually made for us?”
“Aye, many times it is, but this time, it’s your choice. So what’s it gonna be Princess?” He looked at Cordy expectantly and she looked away, back to her baby.
“Didn’t anyone get it when I did this whole thing with Skip that I make sucky decisions?”
TBC