SquidgeWorld Archive

Chapter Text

I'm goin' crazy here.

An' I don't mean that like no 'figure of speech' neither. I am literally on the edge of real and true, medically certifiable insanity, and there isn't one damn thing I can do about it.

I can sympathize with Angel being a ravin' madman after spending a thousand years in Hell. I'm surprised he got back to being the reserved, genteel chap we all know and like, to tell you the truth. I've only been in *my* hell for what, three months now? An' I'm comin' apart at the seems.

But I should probably explain.

When I first woke up in the hold of that ship, I was alone. Questions were flooding through my mind. Had Angel and Cordelia been killed by the Scourge?? Had the Light gone off an instant before I disarmed it, and somehow I was left alive? Were they off getting the half-demon refugees back to their homes??

I didn't have any answers. All I knew was that I felt like death, burnt to a crisp and served with a side of badly broken bones.

I sat up, checked myself over. Okay, a bunch of badly sprained joints, but no actual broken bones. I struggled to my feet and hobbled off to look around.

The ship was deserted, still tied up at the dock. Morning was breaking, so Angel, (if he was still alive,) had almost certainly sought shelter. The dead bodies of a few scourgey guys floating in the water, still rather close to the ship for now, spoke for his survival quite elegantly. I made my painful way off the dock. It would be a difficult walk from here up to Angel's place, but I could handle it.

Why would they have left me there like that? Especially Cordelia... I shook my head. No sense driving yourself crazy with such wild speculation, Doyle man. Just ask her when you next see her...

A woman brushed right past me without slowing down one little bit. "Hey, watch where you're goin', lady!" I yelled at her. And she acted like she hadn't heard me!!

It was a few blocks later that I started to realize what was really going on. That time, a guy didn't just clip me as he passed, he walked right INTO me.

Or, perhaps I should say he walked right through me!!

A little experimentation made some of the basic facts clear. I was completely insubstantial - couldn't touch or affect anything real in any way. Well, I could touch, kind of... I could stand on the ground, of course, or lean against a brick wall, with a little effort. But I couldn't kick a hole in the ground or break a piece out of the wall.

And no-one could seem to see me or hear me! I couldn't even see myself in a mirror, though I could if I actually looked straight at myself. It was *quite* strange.

Suddenly, like the brick wall I mentioned earlier, the implications of this as far as Angel and Cordelia hit me. They hadn't seen me at the ship! They must think that I'm dead... then again, might I be a ghost?? I obviously wasn't a scary, powerful ghost like Dennis' mother who can move objects and scare people... but who knows how many kinds of ghosts there are??

Somehow, though, I didn't think I was really dead. I had a pulse, a lousy ankle, and the demon grandpa of all migraine headaches, and I somehow don't think that ghosts qualify for any of the above.

What else could be going on?? Well, obviously the Light zapped me somehow, but not all the way. It could have sent me out of phase with the real world, like in 'Star trek,' or etherealized me or something. Which meant, that if I could somehow contact Angel and Cordy, they could reverse the spell, and bring me back!!

Great plan. The only problem is... how the heck do you establish contact when you can't be heard, seen, or touched??

When I got to the office, Angel-man was writing something down... notes on a new client or something. I didn't snoop any more, I know it's not polite to read over somebody's shoulder or anything. I did try talking to him, whispering straight into his middle ear, even overlapping our brains in the faint hope that I could send him thoughts. No go.

Angel looked up, and I saw Cordelia sneaking her way into the office. "Hi," Angel said. Cordy heads straight for him now, all sneakiness gone, an inscrutable look on her face. "Everything okay?"

And my dear, darlin' Cordy plants one right on him, smack on the lips. "Hey, now, what's all this about?" I called out, despite the fact that neither of them are gonna hear me.

Angel was looking at least as uncomfortable as I felt, (good thing too!) and after a few muffled protests he pushed her away. "Okay, um, Cordelia," he mumbled, "that was, uh - You know, I think that you're acting out of grief and you're confusing our friendship with something more..."

Cordelia didn't seem to pay any attention to him, being more concerned with... well, with something else. I couldn't say what. "I didn't feel anything. Did you feel anything?"

"No," Angel said. "You see, that's what I'm trying to..."

"Urgh! That means I still have it! Damn, I can't believe he did this to me!" Cordy sounded well and truly mad... kisses? 'He?' Did this have something to do with that little good-luck clinch I stole from her before I made the big jump?? (Had I spoiled her for all other guys, even big broody hunks like Angel??)

"Who did what?" Angel asked. Hmm... very good question. Pays to make sure.

"Doyle! I thought our kiss meant something, and instead he - he used that moment to pass it on to me! Why couldn't it have been mono or herpes?!"

"What the heck? Pass what on??" I grumbled, confused. Wait... there had been something weird that passed between us at the instant of the kiss. At the time, I had passed it off as the excitement of danger, but looking back, it felt like it had something to do with... "The visions??"

"C-Cordelia..." Angel started, looking and sounding extremely confused.

"I didn't ask for this responsibility," Cordelia ranted, "unlike some people, who shall remain lifeless! I don't have anything to atone for. If they know what's good for them, the PTB better just stay out of my head."

There it was... she was getting the visions. "Oh, god, princess, I didn't mean for that to happen," I moaned. "I sure as anything didn't plan it. I guess... I guess the Powers that Be knew that I wouldn't be much good as a messenger now."

Meanwhile, Angel was catching on. "The Powers That Be. You had a vision."

"Boy! Howdy," Cordelia shot back sardonically. "And guess what, you know how they look painful? Well, they feel a whole lot worse!"

"I know," I commiserated.

"Another door opens," Angel mused. "You're my link to - the Powers, now."

Later on I found out that 'another door opens' was something that had been told him by the Oracles, when he went back to plead for my life. They had refused to fold back time, which I might have guessed. But why hadn't they told him that I wasn't really dead? Was there a purpose... to this??

So, yeah, as you might have guessed, I've been schlepping around as Ethereal guy ever since, hanging around the guys even though they can't see me, occasionally spying on strangers, not out of any malice but just to relieve the hellish boredom, keeping my eyes out for some great purpose why I'm in this fix.

Some of the things I've seen and witnessed have been, um, hard on me, yeah. Like that whole demon pregnancy thing... both the fantastic and more ordinary aspects of it. I mean, yeah, sure, Cordelia carrying demon babies, at the mercy of a telepathic link with big demon Pappy, becoming almost half a monster herself along the way, yeah, scary. But also... Cordelia dating, and dating a rich pontz like that 'Wilson Christopher.' I mean, I didn't know he was a psycho in cahoots with a Haksa demon, but I could tell that he was rich, spoiled, arrogant, and the kind of jerk who knew exactly what to say to a girl like Cordelia to get her to like him.

If I find some way to get back... is Cordy even going to still want me?

That night sticks out in my mind for another reason. I was tagging along with Cordelia's date, on and off, ya know. Knowing that I shouldn't be intruding on her privacy, but unable to completely stop myself. That was the first time I'd been to her apartment as an Ethereal.

I could see Dennis!!

At first, I didn't even know who the unfamiliar young man in Cordy's pad was. I watched him turn on the lights, twice, and change the music on the stereo, but Cordealia and Wilson obviously couldn't see him. Then she went and started talking to Dennis in the kitchen, and I clued in, (even though Dennis stayed in the living room the whole time.)

I've gone back there a few times, figuring that if I could see Dennis now when I couldn't before I was zapped, there had to be a connection, maybe some way I could use Den as a (limited) channel of contact with the others. He can't see me, I'm pretty sure of that. I think he can hear me, but not really understand what I'm saying. It's one more little detail that's helping to drive me stark raving mad.

Anyways, where was I? Oh, right, having seen things that were hard on me. Cordelia up at the auction block for the sake of the visions power was right up there. And the demon, tormenting Angel and Cordelia using my name and voice. (Yes, I think he could tell that I was there, but I never said the things he told Angel I did - about blaming Angel for not being able to protect me. If I'd wanted Angel to protect me, I'd have let him make the jump... only I couldn't do that. It was my risk, and my craps. End of the blame game.)

If it should happen to seem that I don't sound crazy... well, yeah, I'm pretty together just at the moment. Telling my story, even to someone who isn't there, is having a calming effect. But I'm in rough shape. I haven't eaten or drunk anything for three months, of course. I don't actually starve, but I feel the effects anyway. (Sometimes I *do* wonder whether I'm just fooling myself, whether I'm just a ghost who thinks he's alive. Oh well.)

I've been having the wildest hallucinations... headless horsemen and half-demon sorceror children and starships and beautiful vampire babes... I even thought I saw an Oracle speaking to me the other week.

And I've been experiencing a growing sense of surrealism - that all of this is a dream, that nothing matters any more. I don't give in, though. I keep ahold of one thought, above all else.

I'VE - GOT - TO - GET - BACK!!

TBC