DISCLAIMER: All characters from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel the Series belong to Joss Whedon
TIMELINE: I Will Remember You ( season 1 Angel the Series)
SPOILERS: I Will Remember You and all else up to Season 6 of Buffy and Season 3 of Angel
SYNOPSIS: What if the Oracles are not without their own agendas?
DISTRIBUTION: Anyone who wants it, just let me know.
AUTHOR'S NOTES: I've never liked Cordelia, and season 3 of Angel with "Saint Cordelia" has made me feel physically ill. I don't buy it.
FEEDBACK: Always. Please. Rehatha@greydusk.net
RATING: If you can watch the show, you can read this.

"You again."

Angel glanced from the cold, expressionless male Oracle to his slightly more sympathetic female counterpart.

"What have you brought me?" the dark-haired female demanded immediately.

"Famille Rose vase," Angel answered, holding up the delicate black glasswork. "Ching dynasty. Circa 1811." He tossed the gift to her, indifferent to the fate of the antique.

The vase sailed through the air, neatly into the blue- skinned Oracle's hand. "Lovely," she cooed, admiring the gift. The male rolled his eyes and glowered at the man that had violated their presence. "Why are you here, lower being?"

Angel swallowed, his mortal stomach churning and his newly- beating heart pounding out a rapid tempo. "The Mohra demon said the End of Days had begun. That others were coming, soldiers of darkness. I need to know if he was telling the truth."

"As far as such things can be told," the male responded indifferently.

The ex-vampire inhaled sharply, then continued in a calm voice. "What happens to the Slayer when these soldiers come?"

The female tossed the vase over her shoulder and the priceless piece of art disappeared mid-air. Her brown eyes focused hard upon the mortal supplicating their favor. "What happens to all mortal beings, albeit sooner in her case."

Angel flinched. "She'll die?" Their silence filled the air and the dark-haired man continued quickly before the two beings hurled him from their presence. "Then I'm here to beg for her life."

The Oracles turned and walked away, their white robes swaying tranquilly with their every step.

"It is not our place to grant life or death," the male commented tonelessly.

Angel continued as if the male hadn't spoken. "And I ask you to take mine back."

They froze, then slowly turned back to face him.

"Look," Angel pleaded to their indifferent countenances. "I can't protect her or anyone this way, not as a man."

The dark-haired female cocked her head to the side, showing the golden glyphs in her skin to advantage. "You're asking to be what you were," she clarified carefully. "A demon with a soul, because of the Slayer?"

The male turned away in disgust. "Oh, this is a matter of love. It does not concern us."

Seeing his opportunity slipping away from him, Angel focused on the female's attentive face. "Yes, it does. The Mohra demon came to take a warrior from your cause - and it succeeded. I'm no good to you like this. I know you have it in your power to make this right. Please."

The male glanced from the pleading man to the female. "What is done can not be undone."

She glanced at her male counterpart craftily. "What is not yet done can be avoided."

The male glowered at her and replied in sharp tones, "Temporal folds are not to indulge at - the whims of lower beings." She smiled, baring her sharp white teeth. "You are wrong," she contradicted. "This one is willing to sacrifice every drop of human happiness and love he has ever known for another. He is not a lower being."

The male hesitated, staring at her determined face and then to the pleading features of the man before them. "There is one way," he conceded, "but it is not to be undertaken lightly." The woman nodded triumphantly. "We swallow this day, as though it had never happened. Twenty-four hours from the moment the demon first attacked you, we take it back."

Images of the last heavenly twenty-four hours flashed through Angel's mind. Blissful moments when he had been allowed to embrace and love the woman of his heart with all the passion of his soul; moments where their had been no fatal consequences to their love.

Kisses, laughter, confidences and sweet dreams, all to be swallowed up, all to have never existed. They would go back to their isolated lives of duty and pain, but she would live. And one day, she would love another.

He licked his lips, pained at the thought but willing to do it for Buffy's sake. "Then none of this happened and Buffy and I…What - what'll stop us from doing the exact same thing again?"

The female cocked her head to the side, her dark hair cascading over her bare shoulder. "You. You alone will carry the memory of this day. - Can you carry that burden?"

Angel closed his eyes and remembered the green glow of Buffy's eyes as she stared down at him, curling her warm body next to his warm body in his bed. He remembered the radiant curve of her smile and the tenderness of her fingertips as she traced his features.

For love of her, he could endure anything.

The male Oracle turned to face his female counterpart, his indifferent mask falling away to reveal his disgust and anger. "You play a dangerous game, sister."

Her brown eyes flashed a warning at him as her features slowly shifted back to the beauty of her original form. "We are related only by the commonality of our visions. Don't presume a relationship that does not exist."

His lip curled into a sneer. "You are no true Seer and a disgrace to your calling. The Powers were overly hasty in your testing and acceptance as a higher being."

She smiled arrogantly. "In either case, I am here."

"Your lies to the warrior are cruel."

"They're for his own good. She's always been bad for him. Her love is a poison and her presence in his life endangers him."

"His demonic strength would have returned once the fever of the Mohra's blood had left him."

She glowered. "He still would have been mortal."

"You mean he still would have been hers."

"Her presence would still have gotten the Warrior killed."

The male snorted in disgust. "You received no such vision. You are unworthy of you calling. You and that other sycophant, Skip. When you were elevated to the status of Oracle, pulled here between worlds where all time is and the past is not, your façade of selflessness was believed. When you started demanding presents for your visionary services the Powers should have taken heed. Then again, they did ignore the fact that you persuaded one of their finest Warriors to demand payment for his sacred duty. You should be returned to your mortal life as Cordelia Chase, unemployed actress and clinging charity case."

The golden glyphs flared white-gold beneath her human-pink skin. "It's for his own good. Eighteen months from now his precious Slayer will die. As a human in that battle he would doubtless have died as well."

"You did not see that," the male snarled.

She tilted her chin proudly. "Two years from now he will love me. It is I who will comfort him when his son is stolen just as it is I who will counsel him in how to deal with his rebellious offspring."

"Incorrectly," he interrupted.

Cordelia continued as is her male counterpart had not spoken. "And in two years, It is I who will rescue him from his watery prison. Our love will live on without the interference from the bitch Slayer, but that cannot happen if he is human and the Destroyer is born to the Warrior and Slayer. So he will not be human, and the Slayer shall not live. One dies and another is Chosen, no harm, no foul."

"You have ever only believed that the world revolves around you and thus ignored anything that did not include your favorite subject. Your lack of attention to things once told you, shall be your doom."

She sniffed and turned away, moving to admire the numerous gifts that had served as payment for her visions.

The male Oracle turned from his female counterpart in revulsion. He loathed the selfish being that had through guile managed to get herself elevated to a higher level of being. Power had been given without testing the mettle of the creature it had been given too.

All in all, he was grateful that the demon assassin would be invading their domain in the next few months. His own life was a small price to pay for the death of the prematurely elevated Seer. She needed to go back to the mortal plane to learn her lessons in compassion and selflessness and perhaps a few lifetimes as a slug wouldn't be amiss.

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