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Disclaimer: I own no one. They are all the property of Joss Whedon.
Author's Note: Aside from that, I suppose this story and the ones that will follow it require some explanation. As of the episode, “Expecting,” I have decided it might be fun to write down journal entries the way I imagine Cordelia would write them. There will be at least one to mark each episode of the series thus far, and will end whenever the Angel Series Finale airs. Hope you enjoy the look into Cordelia’s mind as much as I will enjoy writing about it.
On a side note, each entry will be subtitled with a quote from the episode of which it’s about. Enjoy:
“Unless you‘re changing the act to Human Torch, I don‘t think we‘re turning back.”
October 30, 1999
Getting visitors from the past is always refreshing, I think. Unless, of course, one of them is a homicidal maniac who wants to kill you and your boss. That alone should tell you what kind of week that Angel, Doyle, and I have had, but let me go into the gory detail anyway.
That first night began much like any other. Angel had just returned from saving a girl named Rachel from a psychotic druggie boyfriend, and I followed up by typing up and printing a bill for the girl. Which led to a lengthy discussion between Doyle and I about saving invoices for those clients who actually had the means to pay. I still don’t know if that one got resolved or not (and I still think I’m right) because a familiar face soon appeared at our front door.
I know what you’re thinking, but it was actually Oz, non-psycho guy. He is the coolest. Get this, he’s a musician, and he plays backup guitar in a hit Sunnydale band. And these are guys maybe on their way to big fame and fortune. They... and Oz were in LA for a gig, as a matter of fact. It was so good to see him, I immediately ditched the conversation with Doyle, who watched as I shamelessly fawned all over this other guy.
Don’t get me wrong though. Oz has never been anything more than a friend; we never dated or anything... although I sometimes wonder why that was. We certainly had enough in common... Oh, well, I guess I should just accept the fact that Oz found more of a match in the softspoken Willow Rosenberg, my polar opposite, and move on.
After some chitchat, Oz asked to see Angel, and Doyle and I were quick to escort him downstairs via the elevator--I mean lift. After the four of us got past the small talk, Oz was quick to produce the real reason he was here in the form of a ring. Both Doyle and Angel had pretty strong reactions to the sight of it, I noticed. When I questioned it, Doyle revealed that the big deal was that this ring would make any vampire who wore it 100% UNKILLABLE! Turns out that Mr. Homicidal Maniac (I’ll get to that later) had dug up Sunnydale looking for it, but it wound up in Buffy’s possession anyway; she’s the one who asked Oz to bring it here. I would have thought that Angel would have been more psyched, but he didn’t even put it on in the time we were there.
Of course, Doyle wanted to celebrate with a drink down at the pub, which Oz and I seconded. Not that Oz and I would do any drinking; we are both underage... Oh, well, the point is that Angel hid the ring while we were out, in such an obscure place that it would cause problems later.
The halfway amusing part of the evening was watching Doyle get so drunk that he started quoting Angela’s Ashes, insisting that the main characters were Betty and Barney Rubble, and referred to Oz as ‘My Little Bam-Bam’ all night. Plus, he was so hung over the next morning that he didn’t remember any of it... Still, Doyle can be a riot if he puts his mind to it. I did laugh at his antics at several points, but I’ll be damned if I let him know that. As I’ve written before, I’m not looking to get into a serious relationship, so I figure it’s better not to encourage him.
The trouble started around the time that Doyle’s hangover was clearing up. Hearing the sounds of fighting in the parking garage next to Angel’s apartment had the two of us running to investigate. And who should we find as the one attacking Angel but Spike, one of the actually scary vampires I’ve encountered in Sunnydale. He’s the one who dug up the ring, by the way, and turns out he’s come all the way to LA just to get it back. Spike’s nothing if not hellbent on achieving his goals. And the disturbing part is that Angel, back in his evil days, taught Spike everything he knows. That should give you an indication of which bloodsucker actually scares me the most--if he were still considered bad, that is... Great, here I go straying from the point again. I REALLY need to learn to quit that!
Anyway, Spike fled after a few words, but the repercussions were still felt. In any event, it had me spending the night at Doyle’s under the fear that Spike could locate and torch my place. In the meantime, Angel took the offensive and spent the rest of the day trying to track down the offending vamp and eliminate him. Fortunately, since Doyle was helping out with this, Angel found out where Spike was in no time and went after him, a mission that should have taken two hours at most. However, Doyle and I didn’t see our friend again until late afternoon the next day.
By mid-morning, when we still hadn’t heard from him, Doyle and I went to Angel’s place fully armed to investigate. We caught Spike on his way out after having ransacked the place, but I refrained from shooting him with the crossbow under fear he’d be fast enough to stop it. After some questioning, our nemesis revealed that Angel was still alive, but how long that remained true depended on us. The short version is that it came down to a simple trade: the ring for Angel’s life.
It took Doyle and I some time of searching the apartment before we even considered the sewer tunnels. And just when I was starting to view the search as hopeless, Doyle surprised me by actually finding the darn thing, underneath a loose rock, no less! I still don’t know how he did it!
Nevertheless, it left us with a dilemma. We couldn’t just hand the ring over to Spike; no doubt he’d kill us in a heartbeat once he got it. Fortunately, we were able to come up with a plan that required Oz’s help. We forced Spike to take us to where Angel was being held, and boy, was our boss ever looking the worse for wear! Turns out while Spike was making arrangements with us, he had left some torture-specializing vampire (Marcus) behind to try and get the ring’s location out of Angel anyway.
In either case, Doyle tossed the ring onto the floor, leaving it up for grabs from anyone. And when Oz drove his van through one flimsy wall of the warehouse and Doyle and I used the distraction to get Angel out safely, I couldn’t help but notice when Marcus snatched up the damn thing and fled--out into the daylight.
We hadn’t gotten far when Angel, despite the amount of pain he must have been in, insisted we turn back, stating that Marcus had a “thing” for children and had to be stopped as soon as possible. Needless to say, it was Angel’s first and last daytime battle, although he and Marcus spent the majority of it fighting in the shadows underneath a pier. But afterwards was the real payoff; Angel got to walk in the sunlight unharmed for the first time in centuries.
Why Angel decided to destroy the ring after the sun went down was beyond Doyle, but not me... Okay, maybe it bothered me a little at first, but after some thought, I began to consider the cons that went with it. For one thing, it was more trouble than it was worth. There’s no point to keeping something, no matter how valuable, if it’s only going to get you killed. Plus, I’m sure that Angel would prefer to work for his redemption from his evil ways rather than have it handed to him on a silver platter. That’s just the way he is.
And another thing I learned is that I definitely know Angel better than Doyle will for a while. Not that that’s a bad thing, but I think it’s good that Angel has both of us in his life. There’s the old friend that shares a history and knows him a lot better than she’ll admit. And the new friend who, although he barely knows the guy, won’t mind sticking his neck out once in a while. All in all, the three of us make a good team, and I hope we continue to be known that way for a very long time.