Quick introductions followed.  The passion of Buffy and Spike’s reunion aside, the tension in the room was too great to allow for much of anything else. 

Greetings accomplished, Spike gently prompted, “The story, Rupert?”

Giles hastened to respond; it seemed as though his love of lecturing had remained undiminished.  “Well, yes.  Although how much of a story really depends much more upon what you know.  All we have at the moment are vague impressions of a forthcoming imminent dark force.”

“Bloody hell—forgot how much dealing with you was like watching sodding Star Wars.”

“See, that’s what I keep telling him.  Andrew and I try and try to convince him that all the vague isn’t really helping anyone, but nothing will do but ‘imminent forces, prophetic implications, world on the verge of infinite doom, blahdiddy blah.’  That’s why I’m learning the languages—at least that way I know whether or not there’s detail he’s hiding behind all that vague.  And it helps when it comes time to translate it all into Scoobie-speak.  Oh, and hi Spike.  Kinda good to see you.”

“Really, Nibblet?” Spike asked, eyebrow cocked, bravado firmly in place to shield just how desperately he was hoping for a positive answer to his question.

“Oh, yeah.  Of course, you and me are gonna have a talk after we’re done here and once Buffy’s done with you,” she paused and gave him a wicked wink that spoke far more of how much she had grown up than he really wanted to know, “…THEN I’ll kick what’s left of your ass for not telling us you were back.”

“Least you’re not telling me I’ll wake up on fire.”

“Well, there is that,” Dawn answered, smiling quietly just as Buffy squeezed his hand reassuringly.  Dawn’s eyes told him there might still be some bridge-building to be done, but he could still have his Li’l Bit back in his life.  He’d rebuild the damn Brooklyn Bridge from scrap for that chance.

“I don’t mean to interrupt, and I’m certainly glad that a reunion of sorts has been possible, but could we perhaps hear what call has brought the Council into this matter,” interjected Wesley. 

“Yes, I do agree.  Willow and I work very closely with a coven in Devon; they were instrumental in…”

“Bringing me back from the brink of eternal Elvira-hood?”

“Quite.  It was the coven who first sensed the rising of the dark power that turned out to be Willow; they also had some very strong indicators in the early days of the rising of the First.  They’ve sensed something else to be rising soon in Los Angeles, something so dark that both of their prior experiences seem rather pale in comparison.  So far, however, they have been unable to come up with any sort of definite indicator as to what the force may be.  Simply put, we only know that there is an enormous evil on the way, potentially a greater enemy than the First, and that this evil will appear here.”

Buffy’s hand had tightened to near-crushing pressure around Spike’s as Giles mentioned the First; the costs of defeating that enemy all too well-remembered in the face of the miracle next to her.  Spike turned to her, giving her a quiet smile, and mouthed “we’ll be ok, luv” before turning his attention back to the discussion between the two watchers.

“It would certainly be helpful if there was some sort of direction in which the coven could point us.”

“Wesley, it sounded when we came in like you have a pretty solid direction that we should be looking towards,” Willow prodded gently, noticing the pain etched across the man’s features.  She hated to awaken this in him, knowing how much he had suffered over the past years in Los Angeles, but any information that he had on Angel was too important to be buried under the weight of sorrow.

Wesley glanced at her and gave her a small smile, grateful for the understanding written so plainly on her face.  She, too, had lost the woman that she loved, had killed the man responsible, and had seen more darkness inside herself than she had thought possible.  Clearly, she had moved beyond it to forge some new self, even stronger than the Willow he had seen the previous year.  She was the best possible example he could have asked for during this time of turmoil.  Strengthened by that small revelation, Wesley steeled himself to recount his fears to this new group of allies.

“For this information to be its most pertinent, I suppose it would be easiest to start at the beginning, with Connor’s origins.  I’m not certain…exactly how much do you already know?”

“Giles just knows the basics—Angel has a kid, I met said kid when I was re-ensouling Angel last year, suddenly the kid is never mentioned by anyone anymore.  I never really got much more of the back-story than that.  Fred only told me the high points,” Willow finished with a wince, noticing the grief-stricken looks briefly passing over the faces in front of her and tossing a glance towards Illyria.  Whatever that was, it looked like Fred—it wasn’t, of course, but what exactly it was needed to be explained.  If nothing else, it was just kind of creepy.

“And why didn’t I hear any of this?  I was on the plane, too!” Buffy broke in indignantly, clearly not happy at having been left out of the loop.

Willow snorted with barely-concealed laughter as she answered.  “Maybe because you were busy tearing Andrew a new one for the entire length of the flight, Buffy.  It just seemed like you had something more important on your mind than Angel.”

“I guess I did,” Buffy answered, pouting a bit at being left out but fairly unapologetic for missing the briefing on the plane now that she’d remembered the reason for her distraction.

“Did you, now?” Spike asked her, cocking his eyebrow at her and then allowing his gaze to wander from her eyes to her pouting lip and back.  “Might wanna watch that lip, luv.  Know I have a bit of a soft spot for it…”

“Nothing soft about the spot you’re talking about.”  Buffy giggled back in a whisper against his ear, causing him to grin and their audience to hide smiles and roll their eyes; their joy, even in this dire situation, seemed at least a bit contagious.

“Alright, alright, cuddles with the still walking & talking dusty undead aside, there’s some stuff we need to know.  How did Deadboy have a baby, exactly?  Thought he couldn’t get groiny without losing it?”

Wesley resumed his story, more than a bit relieved by the lighter sensibility that had entered this discussion since the arrival of Buffy and her friends.  The wounds within him were still raw, but the presence of others was helping.  “A year after Angel’s arrival in Los Angeles, Darla was resurrected by Wolfram & Hart as a terminally ill human.  Angel attempted to save her but was unable to stop Wolfram & Hart from having her turned by Drusilla.  Something about the experiences with Darla, and the loss of having her turned, snapped him; he didn’t lose his soul, but he was no longer stirred by it, either.  He allowed Darla and Drusilla to kill a number of the firm’s lawyers, fired all of us and tried to eliminate the two of them on his own.  He failed, however, and ultimately had relations with Darla.”

The pained gasps from the Scoobies were little surprise to him.  Of course they’d known Angel slept with someone in order to have a child.  However, they had been the ones to suffer when Angelus had made his first reappearance in a century the last time such a thing had happened.

“He didn’t lose his soul,” Gunn hurried to add, noticing but not understanding the change in the stress level of the newcomers.  “That night’s what brought him running back to all of us, but a few months later something else came running in too.”

“Angel had a son…” Buffy whispered, trying to wrap her mind around the strangeness of what she was hearing.  “Darla was pregnant?  But I thought that couldn’t happen?!” she exclaimed, volume escalating as she turned stunned eyes to Giles.  “Dead seed and all that—you said…”

“Buffy, I’m quite certain that this was a matter of prophecy.  Vampires cannot and do not procreate.  Although in the strictest sense, turning could be considered a type of breeding…”  Giles allowed his academic ramble to taper off, given that his slayer was showing no signs of interest in continuing the conversation.

“Relax, luv,” Spike bent to whisper in her ear, stroking the back of her hand with the pad of his thumb gently, “no little fanged nibblets to breastfeed in the offing for you.”

He chuckled as she slapped him and whispered “Pig!”

“Erm…if I might….Connor was indeed born of prophecy; Darla sacrificed herself that he might be born, and Angel began to raise his son.  Wolfram & Hart, however, had other plans and brought forth in time a vampire hunter whose family Angelus and Darla had slaughtered.  Holtz decided that to take the son would be a far greater punishment than to simply destroy Angelus, and so he kidnapped the boy…with some help.”

No one missed the grimace of pain that crossed the younger watcher’s face at the memory, and Lorne decided that for once the narration wouldn’t have to involve the ripping open of old wounds.  He hadn’t seen Fred’s fate in time, but he would do what he could for this wound of his friend’s.

“Scrumptious here had a prophecy that told him that Angel would kill Connor.  Angelcakes was already acting mucho strange around the baby, also part of Evil Incorporated’s plan, so the prophecy didn’t seem that far-fetched.  Wesley didn’t want to hurt any of us more than necessary, so he took the baby to raise.”

“Holtz’s paramour slit my throat and stole Connor.”  Wesley finished the story in a near-whisper, fingers ghosting against the scar on his throat, and then looked up in surprise at the feeling of a hand on his shoulder.  Willow, perched on the arm of the couch with her hand just resting on his arm and her level gaze meeting his, loaning him silent strength for the endurance of pain conjured by the past.  “When Connor returned, he was essentially a feral warrior who had been raised in the most hellish of dimensions and taught to hate Angel above all else.”

“We all tried to get to him, to let him know Angel wouldn’t hurt him, but he wasn’t havin’ none of it.  He sank Angel to the bottom of the ocean and left him there for months; English saved him, but nothin’ was gonna bring Connor back from that.  When Cordelia came back all demon-infested, that was just the last bit that he needed to lose it—kid was barely hanging on by a thread after we got rid of Jasmine,” finished Gunn.

“So Angel may have had some altruistic motives for wanting his son to be given a new chance at life, then?” queried Giles, still trying to make his way through the information he was receiving.  They’d heard of Jasmine—he’d discussed that much with Angel in the days immediately following Sunnydale’s destruction, a bit of apocalypse comparison among fellow warriors—but any information regarding a son had most definitely been excluded.

“He had absolutely altruistic motives for that action—I truly believe that,” answered Wesley, “although he did not have the same for having everyone’s memories erased, and reality shifted in order to accomplish it.  Doing that erased not only Connor’s existence, but all of the strife and stress that our relationships as a group had suffered as well.  Quite simply, he erased our memories of things he, and we, had done wrong in order to create what seemed, to him, a better world.  All of these things, coupled with his refusal to break the spell, even when it was the only thing that would save Connor’s life…”

“Reeks of hubris,” Giles finished, sighing inaudibly.  God, how desperately he had hoped that this wouldn’t happen.  Since he had learned of Angel’s takeover of Wolfram & Hart, he had been apprehensive of what the power would do to the vampire.  Memories of the near-apocalypse resulting from Willow’s loss of control ran on a loop in his head.  It was in memory spells that her desire to bend the world to her will had first shown itself, and her ability to achieve a world to her liking, if only for a short while, had resulted in a hubris that had torn his slayer from heaven and almost ended the world.  As if by some unseen force, the eyes of all the Scoobies, including Spike, met for a moment; surprisingly, it was Willow who broke the silence.
“So it’s the beginning of the end for Angel, then.”