Memory

August 30, 2003

A drabble response to August's Castaways challenge on m-mSlashaholics.

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Memory is a tricky thing. Some people forget those they've loved and cared for as easily as it is difficult for others, who've not even met those people, to forget them.

There is a certain irony in this.

He was a shadow, hanging over my very head when I first joined Angel Investigation. I couldn't help but compare myself to a ghost I had never met. They forgot him, but the shadow still hung.

I found his picture in one of Cordelia's drawers, about five weeks after he died and I bounced into their lives. I would take a glance at it from time to time, making sure none of them would see me. Just to try to learn who Alan Francis Doyle was. As if his picture could tell me everything they didn't.

But I learned more than I was looking for. And even when the picture disappeared, forgotten like it's subject, I couldn't let go of him, the thought of him. It is as if Doyle is a part of me, of who I was and who I am now. I can feel him watching me; without even having known him while he still lived, I can see the look on his face when I've done something he wouldn't approve of. Though the contrary is also true.

I sometime dream of meeting him face to face, of what he would say to me if we did. Most of the time, he yells at me for something I shouldn't have done, like after Connor. Or when I slept with Lilah the first time. I kept on doing it as a kind of defiance. I thought that I could drive him away if I kept on disappointing him, but he never left. He is in my head like a second conscience, eating away at my resolve and forcing me on the path of good again. I shouldn't betray my nature, or so he said to me.

Sometimes, I dream of more tender moments, when I failed and he would take me in his arms and let me know that everything was still ok. And I believe him. His arms are strong and fit perfectly around me, like a second skin.

I know all these dreams are only that, dreams, but they help me go on and his presence, albeit a very questionable presence, at my side, in my thoughts, is what keeps me from drowning.

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