Frozen, shell-shocked faces, punctuated only by widened eyes, filled the large conference room of the Watcher’s Council building that currently housed the silent audience to Illyria, Spike, and Lorne’s tale.  All included had listened in rapt attention as Spike and Lorne had told the tale, Illyria inserting only occasional asides; the waves of emotion that had crested throughout the room had been almost tangible, with rage, sadness, bitterness, confusion, and finally simple shock taking over each of them in turn.  Motion had ceased after about thirty minutes of conversation, the stillness broken only by the wringing of hands or the clenching of fists, the only sounds in the room besides the voices of the storytellers being the occasional gasps and quiet mutterings.  It seemed that everyone had attempted to come prepared, had made some effort to steel themselves psychologically for what was certain to be a devastating blow, but somehow what had been uncovered had been worse than even the darkest scenarios imagined.  The faces of Angel’s former colleagues, for they surely couldn’t believe themselves colleagues any longer, were perhaps more anguished than those of the Scoobies, but the narration had clearly devastated each and every listener.   

Giles had always, in his true heart of hearts, feared that something along these lines would happen.  He had not always been as ignorant of events in Los Angeles as he had let on, and he had never really trusted the vampire.  In fact, in the months that had apparently led up to Connor’s conception, he had been prepared to travel to LA to stake the bastard himself.  He had heard of Darla’s resurrection and subsequent turning—such things weren’t easily hidden in supernatural circles—and upon Drusilla’s return to Sunnydale had queried a little more closely into the vampire’s dealings.  He had learned that Angel had separated himself from his friends and his agency, giving over more and more to a darkness that seemed very much as though the soul had fallen into disuse; he had kept the information from his slayer and her friends because of the upheaval that had characterized those days in Sunnydale, but he himself had begun to make preparations.  Only the escalation of the Glory threat had kept him from taking that final step, and he had to wonder now what effect such a preemptive strike would have had.  Would the innocents saved in the years since Angel’s reunion with his colleagues have been acceptable losses to avoid all of this chaos now?  He found that, once again, nothing involving Angel allowed for an easy answer—except, of course, for the situation with which they now found themselves confronted.

Wesley, for one, found that he didn’t feel nearly as shocked as he should be.  The despair was there, the grief at the betrayal of a friend still stung, but those were feelings that he had already prepared for and accepted, in so many ways.  Any feelings for himself, however, were far surpassed by the numbing horror of the realization of just how deeply Connor and Fred had been betrayed.  The father had, despite everything—despite even the sacrifice that Wesley truly believed that Angel had attempted to make—destroyed the son.  And Fred... the vampire who had stood by her bedside and sworn his devotion and assistance, the vampire she had trusted to save her, the vampire who had given them all a rousing speech designed to inspire them to greater efforts of salvation; this was the being responsible for her death.  But there had been times, flashes of instants, in which thoughts along this vein had already appeared.  In his darker moments during his “leave of absence” after Fred’s death, when the memory of vengeance upon Gunn proved insufficient to quell the howling of rage and loss inside him, he had entertained the possibility of something much like the truth with which he was now faced.  After all, Charles had merely signed the form that released the sarcophagus from Customs; someone with a substantially greater amount of power in both the supernatural and mortal realms would have been required to remove Illyria from her tomb and bring her as far as Customs in Los Angeles.  Who better in a position of power that straddled both worlds than Angel, a legendary vampire, nominal head of a powerful clan and leader of the home office of the world’s largest and most influential supernatural law firm?  Suspecting and knowing, however, were far different things, and the crippling grief for Fred returned; he found himself looking towards Illyria just for the comfort of the familiar profile, though he knew it to be a foolish comfort.  Sometimes one simply took what one could.

Willow was horrified; there was simply no other word for it.  She herself knew the pull of evil, knew what it felt to have power beyond your wildest imaginings and to wield it like a lethal blade, but she still found herself disappointed in Angel in ways she could hardly quantify.  She had trusted him, even after he had violated the safety of her home and her school, after he had murdered Ms. Calendar—she had put aside her own concerns and supported Buffy in her decision to bring the vampire back into their lives.  She had held Buffy while her best friend sobbed out the ache in her broken heart over her lost love and comforted her with the knowledge that Angel might have been gone but he was still fighting for good, was still noble and brave and may one day earn enough redemption that he and Buffy could reunite.  She had taken the long, dismal bus trip to Los Angeles to break the news of Buffy’s death to him in person, even though she was buried under her own anguish, because she cared too much for his feelings to let him hear such news over the phone.  She had put his soul back into his body not just once but twice, once well before she understood the power that coursed through her with the conjuration of the spell.  It was this last fact that terrified her, that made her heart and mind race and forced her to wring her hands nearly raw with anxiety.  So many things she had done had gone so wrong—what if her soul spells had been faulty?  Apparently both times she had put it back, the demon was still somehow able to subvert the soul and push it out of dominance—could this be her fault?  Could all of this nightmare be put down to a child playing with magicks beyond her control, or to a confident young witch enjoying the opportunity to exercise her powers again for the side of good?  Had any of it ever been preventable, or was this just the way things were supposed to be?

Gunn wasn’t sure how he was supposed to feel; he was fairly certain that once this all hit home he wouldn’t be able to feel at all.  He had spent so much time blaming himself, believing that all of Fred’s fate lay squarely on his shoulders; that feeling wasn’t gone now—far from it—but it was somewhat tempered by the knowledge that Angel had been involved from the very beginning.  Gunn hadn’t known what he was signing, but he had known that someone was going to die; there was no way out from under that guilt, and he shouldered the mantle of the role of executioner of the woman he had loved with a heavy heart.  But Angel had known that it would be Fred, had planned for it to be Fred; the knowledge made him feel somehow better, and then guilty for feeling relieved by the sharing of responsibility.  He was having a hard time remembering why he had stayed to work with Angel, why he had set his tragically-learned beliefs regarding vampires on their ear for the benefit of the one who claimed to be different.  Why had he, Cordy, and Wes taken him back after the first time he had abandoned them?  Sure, life and work had been harder without the muscle Angel had provided, and the lack of an immortal business partner caused some moments of mortal fear, but somehow they had done all right.  What would have happened if he and Fred had stopped looking for Angel the summer that Connor had sent him to the bottom of the ocean?  What if Wesley hadn’t found him, had instead left him there—would he have eventually wasted away to ash, or would he have found a way to resurface and seek revenge?  Would any of this have happened if they hadn’t agreed to take over Evil, Inc.?  Life on the streets had been hard, but simple in its way, and that knowledge led him to the one question to which he could find no answer.  Why had he decided to exchange the hardscrabble simplicity he had known for a life in which no question ever had an answer?

Faith sat quietly in a corner, trying to absorb everything she had heard.  God, she had just staggered out of the car, numb from the ridiculously long drive from Cleveland, only to be greeted by this.  Angel had been the one to save her, to pull her back from the blackness that was consuming her with every breath.  He was the one who took her on, unafraid, even when she terrified herself; he was the one who believed in her when everyone else had stopped even trying.  In a life full of betrayal, of loss and devastation and an inability to trust, the first person who really climbed out on that limb with you had a special significance.  She had thought that it had hurt to see him as Angelus a year before, to watch a pure demon prance around in the skin of the vampire who had carved his way into her reluctant heart, who had made her love him as the guardian she had never really had.  The words Angelus had spouted to her, the venom in his tone when he told her that he was much more a part of Angel than the soul, that the blackness within was Angel’s true self… those had burned, had ached, had struck deep in the core of her own desire for atonement.  She had been consumed with his words for the entirety of her trip to Sunnydale at Willow’s side; if Angel really believed those things, if the darkness was all they’d ever really have, then why was she even trying to fight the good fight?  But the battle with the First, and then the year after that battle, during which she had been deemed a valued member of the group that had once written her off as a hopeless case—those things had taught her just how worthy this fight for which she had been destined truly was.  The knowledge of and belief in her purpose just made the memory of Angelus that much more acute and painful; if she had staked him, if she had injected herself with a poison strong enough to kill him—she might have ended up dead, but others would have lived.  She shook her head and rose to stand at the window, gazing down onto the street below.  For so long she had been the disappointment, the one to whom all expectations came to die; to feel so let down, so utterly forsaken and deceived, was a new and wrenching experience.  For the first time, she truly understood what she had done to Buffy, to Giles, to Wesley… it was an ugly mirror to look into.

Illyria stood, hands tracing the faint swirling patterns in the paint on the walls, attempting to create some semblance of order, of reason, out of the sickening depths of feeling echoing off of these walls.  The room stank of humanity, of heart and faith; long ago, the wisest of the Old Ones had learned that such things were far more detrimental than beneficial.  Vampires had been, in her time, the ooze that fed upon itself; the taint of humanity that infected them led them to ensnare and destroy each other in complicated bonds of fealty and affection that served as forces of both unity and division.  They were easily diverted, and much more easily dominated or destroyed than purer demons such as herself.  If vampires were lesser beings, then humans were most certainly below the muck and the mire, mewling creatures driven by petty concerns and fleshly desires, but with curious and troublesome souls that somewhat bound their actions.  They were pitiful and less than worthy of her concern, of the expenditure of her energies.  Why, then, did she feel the need, perhaps even the desire—though the word and its connotations sickened her—to help these in their quest?  She cared little for any of them, supposing her bewildering affections for Wesley, Spike, Gunn, and even Lorne to be remnants of a shell somehow not completely purged clean.  The half-breed Angel had proven himself to be a ruthlessly corrupt leader, and she was in turns intrigued and disturbed by the facility he showed for treachery.  She had concerns for her own fate; limited as she was by this new shell, she was uncertain that a defeat of the half-breed would be possible should he launch a full-scale assault upon her.  Although she hated the vestiges of humanity left behind in her new prison of flesh and bone, she hated more the idea of resting in the Deeper Well, lost to the ages and the world and wallowing in anonymity.  She was a great warrior, a god of an age that presaged the written word; she deserved more than ignominy and decay.  She would fight alongside these creatures for her own sake, for the newfound ‘life’ that she both loathed and relied upon.  Turning away from the wall and focusing her intentions on the rich table in the corner, she ignored the strange sensation that her concern lay also with the fates of others, those who had featured in the life of her shell and now in her own fleshly tenure.  Losing herself in the swirls of woodgrain, she wrestled with motives that were not entirely selfish for the first time in her long and storied existence.

Xander couldn’t stand the silence; he’d never done well with stillness or quiet.  It was probably the reason he talked so much, made so many lame jokes to break up the tension.  He’d simply learned at an early age that a lack of noise was never, ever good; screams and turmoil, objects flying around the room—these things meant that the fury behind them would exhaust itself quickly, like a sudden summer storm.  But silence and stillness meant caged fury, rage that built slowly and simmered until it exploded in violence.  Not every silence was about anger, Xander knew, but still—old habits died hard, especially those learned under fists and the stinging bite of leather.  Except now he didn’t think that he had it in him to be the funny guy, the guy who broke the silence with jokes that fell flat, who prompted nervous giggles and looks both scolding and grudgingly appreciative.  It didn’t seem appropriate somehow, not with everyone looking so stricken and devastated—it didn’t seem as though humor had any place here among the heartbreak and tangible despair.  He felt betrayed, too, though it wasn’t something he wanted to dwell on; he had never liked Angel, had hated him with the fiery passion of a thousand suns, but had still somehow always felt better knowing that the vampire was doing what he could on the side of right.  To find out that that had become a sham—well, it stung.  Desperate for a break from the anguish, he looked at Buffy seated next to Spike’s standing figure, gripping his hand as though she’d fall through to the other side of the world if he let her go, and marveled at how much they complemented each other, how even reeling as they were they somehow managed to exude an air of calm and quiet strength.  He never would have predicted that one day he’d be thankful for the hope presented by a relationship between Spike and Buffy; he supposed he really had grown up in more ways than one.  Maybe it was the fact that before him was a vampire with a soul who had fought for and earned it; who knew the stakes of the battles they waged, and fought with all he had; who had been doing it for years, even before the soul—he shook his head for an instant, wondering to himself when he’d become Spike’s hallelujah chorus.  Apparently growing up had some unexpected side effects.  A small smile shaped his lips, but disappeared quickly as he looked at the broken former Watcher seated next to him, and his heart clenched for the man staring at Illyria with pleading, desperate eyes.  What could he say?  Xander and Wesley had never been close, and history at this point seemed an insurmountable barrier; even so, he’d still felt this man’s grief, was still feeling it, and couldn’t in good conscience just leave him to his torments.  He clapped a gentle but firm hand on the man’s shoulder in a silent show of support, a half-smile forming on his face when Wesley met his gaze and gave him the ghost of a tentative smile in return.  Baby steps, thought Xander… one day at a time, and maybe we’ll both get there.

Lorne stood quietly, steeling himself for the blow that he was about to deal to a crowd already on the ropes.  Gods, how he hated this; the worst part of owning Caritas had been sharing the dark fates and feeling the anguish and the pain that came as a result of his visions, but doing this to people that he cared for on a deeply personal level, because of a vampire that he had foolishly believed he had known so well… it was killing him.  He was going to completely obliterate an entire room of people, kick them while they were down, and all because only he could truly know what was going on inside Angel’s head.  He had never been clear on the entire soul issue, not with Angel and not even with himself; he of course knew that he was a demon, though he was fairly unsure as to whether or not he had a soul—but he was entirely certain that it simply didn’t matter.  He had an internal compass by which to guide his actions, a sort of Hippocratic oath of the heart and the psyche that he adhered to tightly; a vow that required him to be honest with those who sought his insight and guidance, to tell them what he knew in all of its joyous or gory detail.  For the first time he truly wished that he didn’t have to, that whatever soul or value system or moral compass he possessed would disappear or malfunction and leave him in peace from this task.  Painful truths were always unpleasant, but this… what could possibly be said about what he had to do, the things he had to relate?  If anyone could face what was coming, it was the group in front of him, of that much he was certain; it was the overwhelming sense of injustice, the feeling that they shouldn’t have to, that made him want to weep. 

Dawn didn’t really feel anything other than the anger that she’d pretty much always felt towards Angel growing into burning rage.  The memories may have been manufactured, but the feelings they evoked were both real and intense.  She remembered him climbing in her sister’s bedroom window, giving her exaggerated shushing gestures and patronizing smiles that had her rolling her eyes as he told her what a good little sister she was to Buffy; she had been eleven, not four, and even if she had been a toddler that routine would’ve been old.  It was hard to think kindly of a guy who snuck into your house after he went all crazy/evil, left creepy drawings of your sister on her pillow, and gutted all your childhood keepsake stuffed animals before decking your room in fluffy innards.  And then when he came back just to crank up the angst and break your sister’s heart by leaving her… how many nights were you supposed to listen to someone you loved sob her heart out and still believe that the person who’d made her feel that way was a hero?  Buffy had never really been able to be happy with him, not before Angelus because she didn’t want Joyce to know and not after because she knew that her happy could cause his happy, and his happies ended the world.  It had just been so much drama.  Well, the whole thing with Spike hadn’t been completely drama-free, but a lot of that—most of that—had been Buffy’s fault; all she’d had to do was own up to the fact that she and Spike were a couple and stand up to her friends for once, and life could’ve gone much more smoothly.  It wasn’t that Dawn and Spike didn’t still have a conversation to have—they did—but even with that still looming, she could look at the vampire who’d been her big brother and father figure rolled into one and the sister who’d raised her through the most difficult years of her life and watch them glow.  They were happy together, calm in the center of a raging storm.  She wanted Angel off the face of the earth for trying to destroy that alone; the rest was tragic, but incidental.

Andrew was at a loss, once again at a crossroads between fantasy and real, messy adulthood that he didn’t want to navigate.  He hadn’t really felt this way since Buffy had held him over the hellmouth’s seal, forcing him to grow up and to face the loss and the devastation he had wrought.  That was the first time he’d truly grasped it, the difference between children’s play and cold reality, the world outside the videogame screen or the movie theatre where actions had lasting consequences.  And now, here he was, still at Buffy’s side, and learning another part of that painful lifelong lesson.  He realized in a rush that it's one thing to play, to pontificate about vampyres and the dangers they could pose, one thing to read their histories and to think you understood how dangerous they were.  But to realize that you were going to have to face down a storied vampire, still evil despite his soul—that was hell.  Andrew didn't think he'd ever been this frightened, not even on the hellmouth; there, too, it had been all of them against a common foe, but Andrew hadn't exactly taken on the Turok-Han and challenged their authority.  He had taped the First, but he thought somehow that it understood that for the pitiful children's attempt that it was, an attempt to simply do something that had no lasting effect.  But he had stared Angel in the face, delivered Buffy's message that they weren't on the same side anymore—how much had what he said that night affected the monster that Angel had apparently become?  Somewhere between Angel and Angelus lay something worse that Warren, something maybe worse than the First.  The First could smile and simper and lie, but it couldn't actually be someone you trusted, loved... Angel had been, for a lot of the people in this room.  Could they really do this?  He had somehow never really doubted these people, even when they were all that stood between he and Jonathan and Darth Rosenberg… but could they face this enemy now?  And then he realized:  Buffy had sent Angel to hell once, and had been prepared to kill Willow—and apparently Anya, he realized with a start, recalling something the ex-demon had once mentioned in passing—if she’d had to; Xander had faced down black Willow and brought her back from the edge, and Giles had faced her head on as well.  All of the others had had to witness the First take the faces of their loved ones and had made it through sane.  Even he had done it, he thought proudly.  He really didn’t know Angel’s group all that well, except of course for Spike, but he had a feeling that they would show themselves much like the Scoobies.  Of course they could do this—they could take on Angel; fantasy or reality, this was what heroes did. 

Spike watched them all struggle with the news; there was, unfortunately, little he could do to help, to ease the ache.  He himself was still struggling with the truth of what would have been their future, and he’d been there to witness all of it in bloody, horrifying Technicolor.  He looked around and saw faces in varying stages of pain, reflection, acceptance, betrayal, confusion, and loss, and knew that his own must be a mirror of at least all of those emotions, if not a few more that he couldn’t quite quantify just yet.  Of course, he also knew that there was more to be told, more that he himself didn’t yet know, and that whatever it was had kept Lorne locked in his office half-inside a vodka bottle for the remainder of the day.  He watched the empath’s jaw tense and hands clench and unclench as he processed his own emotions, and knew that if the wave of feelings in the room were this palpable for him, they must have been overwhelming for Lorne, even without anyone singing or doing much more than breathing.  His gaze drifted to Wesley, and to that man’s pained stare towards Illyria; he recognized that look all too well, had worn it often enough during the summer that Buffy was dead and he had to look at the Bot.  God, that toy had never seemed so obscene until it was there when she wasn’t, so blatantly not her and yet still so comforting in its presence, and he had been torn between the desire to hold it tightly and weep bitter tears and the equal, fervent need to rip it asunder for daring to try to be her .  He knew how the boy Watcher felt because he’d been there, and if he was any judge of character at all he knew that Wesley was blaming himself for Fred’s loss as much as Spike had blamed himself for Buffy’s.  God, what a mess they all were.  His eyes continued to flicker over faces rapidly, hesitant to land on others for fear of becoming overwhelmed again; the calculating fury that hardened Giles’ features, the nervous self-doubt that made Willow look more like the teenager in the fuzzy purple sweater than the sometimes over-confident witch he’d come to know, the mixture of relief and reproach on Gunn’s face, and the crushed reflection and recognition on Faith’s.   He forced his thoughts and his eyes to stop wandering, forced them to narrow to only the pain in his hand where Buffy gripped it tightly, and he looked down into big, lost green eyes.  What the hell was Angel thinking?  He hadn’t done enough to this girl?  Stolen her innocence, broken her heart, shattered her ability to trust, created deep stress fractures in her relationships with her friends and her mother, wounded her belief in herself to a point that she could hardly believe herself worthy of respect or love.  He managed to barely quash the subvocal growl that threatened and instead bent and kissed her hand and her head before straightening to stand again.  This was her time to process, to need support, to quest for answers in her head; he would be her stalwart for that.  That’s what he did best. 

Buffy knew that she might be hurting Spike, that she was squeezing tightly enough to crack bone, and still she couldn’t tear her hand away.  He was real, he was her anchor here in this world, where one of her few certainties had been torn from her.  It hurt to have the ridiculous self-imposed blinders ripped off of your eyes, especially when, upon reflection, you always should’ve known better.  Angel wasn’t evil if he had a soul.  That’s what a soul did.  That was what Angel said, and Giles had agreed.  How ironic that it would be the vampire who had proven that a soul wasn’t necessary for love who would be the one to comfort her when she was finally, brutally forced by another to face the cold fact that the presence of a soul wasn’t enough to save one from the dark.  But then, she should’ve known that herself; she had returned from the grave, soul intact, and proceeded to tear Spike apart touch by touch, word by word, and a part of her had gloried in the metaphorical bloodshed.  Hell, she’d watched Willow, soul intact, strip a man’s skin off of his body and then set him aflame.  And of course there had been that kid in high school who tried to beat his girlfriend to death, Amy’s mom, Marcy the invisible girl, the guys who tried to build FrankenCordy, Andrew’s brother Tucker, Dr. Walsh, Andrew, Warren, Jonathan, the frat boys who tried to feed her to the creepy penis snake demon… the list went on and on.  They had all had souls.  And yet somehow she’d always been so stupid, had just kept buying into the idea that a soul makes all the difference, makes you better, more capable of love, more trustworthy… and she’d wasted so much time.  She’d hurt Spike so much that she didn’t think she’d ever make it up to him and all because she couldn’t let it go, couldn’t make Angel’s ghost shut the hell up and let her live her life.  Spike had been showing her, slowly, day after day that he’d changed, that he didn’t need the soul or, after a while, the chip to be a good man; all he’d needed was love for her.  It broke her heart now… how worthy he’d been of her love, and how cruelly she had denied it.  She closed her eyes silently and wished that it had been Angel she had pounded to near-putty in that alley, that it had been Angel whose home she had bombed and whose heart she’d destroyed, that it had been Angel who had never been sure of her feelings, that it had been Angel who’d used the damned amulet and she’d had the sense to destroy it once he’d burned.  He was certainly not deserving of ever having known or experienced her love—or anyone’s, for that matter.  That Angel would do this to anyone when he wasn’t Angelus shocked her to her core, although she knew that it shouldn’t.  Her heart broke for his friends, for her friends, for herself, and she turned her face into Spike’s thigh and felt the tears come as the last of her naivete left her.

Xander twitched nervously, finding it impossible to keep still and silent any longer.  He’d tried, he really had, but… it looked like it was time for him to do his thing.  The more things changed…  He started by shuffling his feet and fiddling with the edges of his eyepatch, both actions earning him annoyed, if understanding, looks from Willow, Buffy, Dawn, and Giles.  Finally he couldn’t withstand the silence anymore and piped up, “Can I just say that at least I finally got proved right about one of the Dead Boys?  Is it too late for the dance of the ‘I Told You So?’”

“Xander!” Willow chided, secretly relieved.  Leave it to Xander to know just the wrong thing to say, and to say it so well.  Buffy and Dawn’s nervous giggles joined hers, and she met her friends eyes and saw that they too understood now, as they always had on some level, his need to find humor in the face of horror. 

Spike’s gravelly chuckle surprised them more than a little, and he looked down to meet Buffy’s widened eyes with a wink.  “What?  ‘s funny, for once.  An’ he was right.  Gotta give the boy some credit, luv—once in eight years isn’t great odds, but still…”

“Yeah, yeah, Bleached Wonder… don’t need your pity laughs,” grumbled Xander, but there was suspicious merriment in his visible eye and Buffy, Willow, and Dawn looked at each other, completely mystified.  Even Giles and the others were exhibiting the early signs of shock.

“Don’ look so surprised, pet; hatred of Peaches is a strong unifyin’ factor.”

At that, giddy laughter took over the room; it wasn’t that the jokes were particularly funny, and they certainly weren’t appropriate, but somehow it was still okay.  It demonstrated that they weren’t willing to lose themselves in this battle; they weren’t going to sink in on themselves and cease to be what they had become.  That alone was a part of the war won, and cause enough for celebration, awkward though it may be.

Lorne watched quietly, having moved to the back wall next to the bar.  He stood, glass in hand, and waited until the stillness in the room was well and truly broken, until uneasy mingling and the pouring of drinks had begun.  He was amazed at these people; oh, the LA crew he knew well enough, and while he was still impressed by their skills, he was no longer surprised.  He knew what they could do, had seen them face hell and worse over and over again, and he was a little in awe of them.  But the others, Buffy and her friends… most of them weren’t much out of their teenage years, and yet they were so accomplished, so dedicated, and so unwaveringly confident that they could do this, just as they’d faced and defeated everything else.  Every win had cost them something, and still they all pulled back together… there was something to be said for bonds like that.  It was the thought of that bond—and the feeling that it was expanding to include he, Wesley, Gunn, and even Illyria—that gave Lorne peace as he prepared to unload the rest of his bad news on them.  It was horrid, but they could face it, and they were all together now.  He watched as they grouped off, sitting down again much less stiffly and in formations more conducive to conversation; gulping down the rest of his drink, he took a deep breath and walked back to the front of the room.

Spike spotted Lorne’s approach and knew that it was showtime for the empath—and thank God for that.  The suspense was killing him.  He knew he wasn’t going to like what he heard, was fairly certain that it made Acathla look like a gentle spring rain of evil.  But they needed to know everything about what they were up against, and Lorne was the one who’d seen.  He raised an eyebrow in question at the demon, and when he received a slight nod in reply he cleared his throat.  “Right, then… ‘f we can all pull it together an’ get a little bit of quiet, I believe we’ve got a bit more news comin’ our way… that ‘bout the size of it, Piano Man?” he asked, nodding at Lorne.

“You’ve hit it right on the nose, cupcake,” Lorne responded, taking the standing position vacated by Spike as the latter took a seat by Buffy.  “I don’t know how much you all know about what I do—what I am—so I’ll just give you the quick story and we can get on to what we all want to hear.  I’m an anagogic demon…”

“An empath?” Giles asked, genuinely intrigued.  Tara’s ability to ready auras had been quite useful, but her powers had been fairly limited.  In time, they may have developed, but…  He shook his head to clear it, and refocused on the brightly-clothed demon in front of him.  To have an anagogic demon this closely involved… what a powerful ally an empath could prove to be. 

“That would be it, crumpet.  I can read destinies when people sing—actually, whenever there’s some sort of music from them—humming, whistling, sometimes drumming fingers, if the emotions are powerful enough...  I’ve read Angel a few times since I’ve known him, and I’ve seen enough of the paths he was on and the ones he was supposed to be on to have a pretty good grasp of what the Powers want from their Champion.  He ain’t holding up his end of the bargain anymore, not by a long shot—but that much you all have figured out.  But it’s worse than just that… he’s not just ignoring the Powers.  He’s actively betraying them.”

There were a few shocked gasps throughout the room, but he was oddly heartened by the fact that there weren’t more.  It showed once more that they were all going into this with their eyes wide open and fully prepared.  He took a deep breath, wishing heartily for another drink, before continuing.  “We told you that Angel told us during his rousing fight speech that Cordelia had passed him the vision about the Black Thorn before she died.  In that much of it, he was telling the truth—but she showed him much more than that; she wanted him to know that in order to really bring down the Senior Partners by joining the Black Thorn, he’d have to sign away his Shanshu.  She didn’t want it to be a nasty surprise… she did love him, and she knew how much it meant to him… not surprising that she let it slip.  I don’t think the Powers realized that that was one of the only things that kept him fighting, the other thing being you, there, my little eclair.”  He paused for a moment, nodding at Buffy.  “Well, Connor and Cordelia also, but now Connor is… gone, and Cordy’s dying took her out of the picture pretty soon after he found out he’d lose his reward.  And he knows that you’re in love with Spike… even back in Sunnydale he knew, apparently, no matter what he might have said.  So the problem that he’s facing now is…”

“Losing everything that kept him fighting,” Buffy answered, posture rigid until Spike’s arm tightened around her shoulders.  She leaned into him slightly, curving herself against his silently supportive figure, and allowed the focus of her world to narrow to the comforting little patterns his index and middle fingers were tracing on her shoulder.  Breathing deeply, bringing her gaze back up to that of the vividly-colored demon, she offered a weak smile before saying, “Surprise!  Looks like Buffy brings out the bad again.”

Spike’s angry “Bollocks!” was surprisingly echoed by a similar, though more genteelly spoken, exclamation from Wesley. 

“Nonsense, Buffy.  I won’t have you thinking that.  Angel has doubted the validity of the Shanshu for years now, more keenly than ever after he lost the battle for the Cup of Perpetual Torment to Spike.”

“Wait… Cup of What?  You fought Angel—and beat him?” Buffy turned to her mate, and he was a little disconcerted and more than a little turned on by the feral quality her eyes held.  “Was there blood?  Please tell me there was blood—rivers and fountains of blood.  Oooh—and pain?!  There was pain, right?” she asked, her eyes still deathly serious though her tone held a hint of teasing.

“Might’ve been,” he remarked, smirk in place and eyebrow raised questioningly.  He didn’t know where she was going with this… but god, was it hot for right now.  The feeling was staggeringly inappropriate given the circumstances, he knew that, but he couldn’t help it.  He’d never seen her so bloodthirsty.

“Good.  Tell me later?”

“’f course.”

“Right,” she finished, turning back to Wesley.  “So, Angel doesn’t have me, let Connor die, lost Cordy, and will have to give up the Shanshu, so he’s decided it’s not worth it… is that it?”

“He’s been under the impression for years that the Shanshu was unreachable, or that he was undeserving; at the same time he’s always clung to it as a promise of the gold at the end of the rainbow, as it were.  Faced with its absolute revocation, however, it would be quite likely that he would give up any pretensions to continuing towards a redemption he now sees as useless, especially given the total loss of any sort of external incentive as well.”

“Our little librarian is right, ladies and gents.  He sees it as useless, and while he can ignore it, what he’s doing is hurting his soul—pain he feels is pointless—so he’s going to be making a deal.”

“Who would deal with that nit?” Spike ground out, wanting whatever it was to just be out in the open. 

“The Senior Partners.”  Though the answer came from Wesley, all eyes remained focused on Lorne, waiting to hear the details.

“That would be it.  None of us would survive that final battle, the one after all the Black Thorns except Angel are gone.  We’d all go down heroes, and I’d take a bit longer to die than the rest of you, but the madness would be enough to keep me out of Angel’s way.”  Seeing Wesley’s concerned expression, Lorne smiled self-deprecatingly before answering him as best he could.  “I told you he asks me to kill Lindsey, and that I go through with it.  I’m an empath, Wesley—there’s no way I could keep my sanity, not with the psychic repercussions of cold-blooded murder.  I’d be in the world a bit longer, but not really here.”

“So with all of us out of the way, then…?” Spike prodded, leg starting to bounce as the nervous energy began to take him over.

“Once all of us are gone, the Senior Partners will take his soul and make it impossible for it to be returned.  You see, as long as there’s a soul, there’s still the off-chance that it could regain dominance, and that’s a chance Angel can’t afford.  So that’s the deal—completely soulless with no worries of regaining a conscience, which will be important for what comes next.”

Xander didn’t like the way that Liberace there was looking at Buffy; the mournful, frightened look sent chills through him.  “So once BroodBoy gets himself all soul-Tefloned, then what?  He comes after Buffy?”

“He comes after all of you,” Lorne answered with a sigh, hating this last bit and hating Angel for putting these people, and Lorne himself, through this ordeal.  “He’ll go after Lemondrop there first,” he nodded briefly at Buffy, “since she’ll be vulnerable when he’s carrying news of Spike’s demise and his own undying love for her.  She’s also the power center for the Slayer line.  I’m sorry about this, but… you won’t die pretty,” he added, looking apologetically at Buffy before turning to Giles.  “The rest of the Watcher’s Council will be next—you and all of Buffy’s friends will be the last ones standing, but not for long.  And then, with all of the extra beasts piped in by the Senior Partners for the alley and the Watcher’s Council destroyed, the baby slayers aren’t going to last long, and they’re the last of the line.  Once they’re gone…”

“The Senior Partners have the world in their control,” Giles finished, whipping off his glasses and seating himself stiffly on one of the library stools, staring blindly forward.

“The Senior Partners aren’t part of this dimension—they can’t come here, so it doesn’t do them any good to have a world they can’t enter in their control, unless…” answered Lorne, pressing his lips tightly together.  “This little maneuver leaves Angel as the only force for good or evil operating here… he has it all, and as long as he agrees to keep on the evil side of the equation, he keeps it.”

Of all the sounds that might have been expected in the room, Spike’s angry, barking laughter was the least predictable.  “He’s finally decided opening big rocks isn’t the way to go, then.  So he gets the world—dog racing, Manchester footie, an’ all—on his terms.  Happy Meals on Legs all his for the taking, no chance for a bloody soul or any kind of consequence, an’ he MURDERS MY GIRL an’ all the rest of us for it?!  Bloody fucking HELL!” he raged, slamming his fist into the wall.  Buffy didn’t even wince, just reached up and brushed the plaster from her hair as she stood and wrapped her hand around his fist.

“It’s not going to happen,” she murmured quietly, looking up with eyes that positively glowed with strength and fire and fury.  She turned to the others and repeated her statement, more forcefully this time.  She was surprised how easily General Buffy came back out to play.  “This is NOT going to happen.  None of it.  So from now on, we’re in battle plan mode.  Willow, get on the tracking spell—I want to know how much of what we know he’s actually set in motion, and how much he’s got left to do.  I want to know how many of these balls he’s got in the air right now.  Everybody else, research.  How we stop him, and the Senior Partners, and anyone else involved in this bullshit.  Illyria, what you know about rulers and corruption could come in handy—can you talk to Giles?  Any ideas—ANY ideas—are hereby deemed acceptable.  None of you are dying, and I’ve died enough for one decade.  Got me?”

If anyone was surprised by the ease with which Buffy slipped from young woman to commander, they didn’t show it; rather, they simply paired off.  Wesley followed Willow to assist with her tracking spell, Giles moved to the desk he’d managed to cover with his personal research to tie up loose ends before he approached Illyria for assistance, and the others converged on bookshelves and the stacks of mystically-linked volumes that Wesley had brought from Wolfram & Hart.  Only Lorne, Buffy, and Spike hung on the fringes, the couple engaged in a silent but obviously emotional staring contest and the demon clearly hesitant to interrupt.  Finally, however, Lorne’s own desire to fully clear the air won out and he approached the couple, offering another apologetic smile when their intense gazes turned to him.

“’s not your fault, mate,” Spike told him, answering the apology before it could be made.  There was no need for Lorne to take responsibility for this—God knew there was an ample enough set of shoulders for all of this to rest on.

“And I appreciate that, Snowcap, really I do… it’s just that… well, there’s something else.”

“How could there be any-soddin’-thing else?  After all that…”

“Spike,” Buffy interrupted, sliding her hand up to his bicep and curling her fingers around the taut muscles.  He relaxed, almost imperceptibly, but enough for her to be certain that his fist wouldn’t careen into another wall.  She turned to Lorne and asked quietly, “Is it worse than what we know?”

“It’s nothing to do with this whole mess, sweetpea.  This is something that happened a few years ago—at least, I saw it a few years ago—but you never knew about it, and you deserve to.”

“What?” Buffy asked, obviously both confused and frightened, and Spike again became her comforter, hand sliding around her waist as a silent reminder that she wasn’t alone.

“Angel was… well, human… for a day.  There was a fight, and demon blood… The two of you had one day together, with both of you human, before there was another fight.  He couldn’t protect you, and so he asked the Oracles to take back the day.  You wouldn’t remember, but he would.”

Spike had sensed the weakness in Buffy’s knees before Lorne was half-finished, and he braced her fall as he steered her gently into a chair.  She looked up at him with wide, grateful eyes before looking at Lorne.  “I had this dream… for a while.  After… after Thanksgiving,” she said, meeting Spike’s gaze to indicate exactly the Thanksgiving she meant.  He gave her a slight nod, remembering the broody one’s stalker games and abrupt departure, and also how funny he had thought the whole situation while he was lashed to a chair, half out of his mind with hunger.  “I came to LA to ask him why he’d hidden from me, and we fought and I went back home—which is what happened, or at least what I remember… but in my dream, he was human and we were together and it was so good, and then… there was nothing else.  I was just walking away and nothing had changed… he was a vamp and I was still me and we still couldn’t be together.”

“I’m guessing the Powers didn’t exactly agree with what he’d done, chiclet, and that’s why you had the dream.”

“Oh.  Thank you…for telling me,” Buffy replied simply, quietly, and turned to look at Spike.  It was obvious he didn’t know what to say, and so she just rested her head against his hip and sighed when his hand came up to her hair, stroking it gently.  Lorne detached himself with a small sympathetic smile to Spike and headed for the bookshelves, wanting to give the two a moment together.

“It wasn’t good like this, you know,” Buffy murmured, just loud enough for only him to hear.

Spike looked down and met her gaze.  “Yeah?”

“Yeah.  It was a fairy tale, Spike… a happily never after.  It never would have worked, even if he’d stayed human.  Because he wants to protect me, to shield me, to keep me as the fragile little girl he thinks I am.  That’s not who I am anymore—I don’t even know if it’s really who I was —and I doubt I would’ve lived to see Glory if we’d stayed in that pattern.  I had to make all those decisions… they were mine , but they wouldn’t have been with him there.  That’s not you, and that’s not us.  This—us —is the happily ever after.  You see me as the woman I am, the fighter, the girl—all of it.  That’s what I need… recognition, respect, and the love that comes from both of those things.  That’s how I love you, Spike… and that’s how you love me.  That’s why we work.”

Spike didn’t know what to say, so he simply lifted her up to him and wrapped her in his arms.  “’Til the end of the world, kitten,” he whispered into her hair, pressing a kiss against the top of her head.

“Spike, can we get out of here?” she mumbled against his chest.

“If you want,” he answered, looking down and grinning at the bloodlust in her eyes.

“Good.  I need to go kill something.”

“After you, luv.”

~*~*~*~*~*~*

Angel trudged through the dimly lit lobby of Wolfram & Hart at close to midnight, exhausted from the last week of playing ‘run and catch’ with a few select members of the Black Thorn.  It had taken so much work to put the week together, but slowly the rewards seemed to be coming together.  Sebassis was still distrustful, and Angel himself hated Vail for the whole Connor fiasco, but he thought he’d been able to cover reasonably well.  A certain amount of anger towards the man who’d arranged the murder of your son was apparently forgivable, or at the very least not something any of the Thorn members he’d just met were willing to hold against him.  At least Izzy had seemed receptive to his overture—receptive enough to set up the covert little get-togethers and to keep Hamilton occupied elsewhere, at least; it seemed that racquetball and drinks were good for more than just getting office gossip and all the dirty details of under-the-table dealings out in the open.  And having Izzy on his side should work out much better than having Hamilton as a support, though he supposed he’d still have to play that little game through just to keep the idiot from feeling snubbed; Izzy was closer to the Senior Partners and was better positioned to propose him to the Black Thorn, was a member of the Circle himself though he wouldn’t discuss specifics.  All of this was good, because Angel knew that nothing was going to happen in terms of the Partners intervening with the Black Thorn on his behalf as long as he relied upon Hamilton.  He knew the bastard could have gotten him inducted into the Circle by now, or at the very least could have gone through the Partners to get Angel talking to who he needed to see—and he knew it just as clearly as he knew that Hamilton hadn’t done anything for him because he didn’t like him, didn’t think him worthy.  So Angel had gone above his head, and would see it severed soon if all went well.  Honestly.  The nerve of that prick, thinking that Angelus, the Scourge of Europe, wasn’t evil enough for that little demon cabal. 

That was the problem with demons, he’d come to realize in his two centuries stalking the earth; immortality gave them attitude, made them think they were somehow superior.  He laughed bitterly; they were all damned, even him.  He’d always thought the soul would save him, that the curse had somehow backfired on those thrice-damned gypsies and would exalt him rather than leave him a broken shell, but Cordy had shown him the truth.  He’d have to sign away the Shanshu.  His Cordy was dead.  He’d watched his own son die, too overwhelmed by his own cowardice to make the right decision when he’d been caught between a vengeful mage and the betrayal he’d engineered.  And his Buffy… well, his Buffy was in love with Spike.  God, it was sickening.  He had lost, or would lose, everything he had fought for, and for what?  A noble battle he couldn’t win?  He scoffed as he slammed his hand against his office door, forcing it open.  The fucking Powers had gone too far this time; he wasn’t signing away his Shanshu just so he could turn to dust in an unwinnable battle.  One brief, shining moment his ass.  He was going to have years, centuries of carnage ahead of him… all he had to do was bide his time with the Circle. 

He came to a stop as he shook himself from his mental wanderings enough to notice the utter disrepair of his desk.  Everything atop it had been wrecked—papers crushed and wrinkled, whole files ripped apart, the finish marred with deep scratches, and the outside edge crushed ?  How the hell had that happened?  He walked closer and stooped to inspect the damage—two splintered, raw dents about four inches wide each, approximately hip-width apart from each other—what in the world possessed someone to come in and desecrate his office? 

He rounded his desk to phone both security and maintenance when he caught a scent that tugged on the edges of his memory… something about it seemed so familiar, but then again it seemed muddled somehow, mixed with the scent of another and of something else… He took a deep breath and closed his eyes, focusing his senses.

Sex.

Someone had had sex on his desk.

Well, that would get them fired, if not killed.  When he found out who it was, he’d…

And then the scent memory clicked, and he knew exactly who had been here.  Buffy.  And Spike .  But her scent was stronger, almost intoxicatingly so, almost as though a part of her was still here…

He grabbed the edge of the desk and tipped it in his rage, sending the heavy wood crashing to the floor.  He grabbed the phone, smashing it against the wall before moving to the drawers, yanking them out one by one.  Something of Buffy was here, he knew it, could almost taste it…

The tiny scrap of lace and satin that had landed on his shoe drew his vision like a homing beacon, and he just stared for long moments, brain scrambling to process what he was seeing.  Finally stooping to pick up the fabric, he brought it to his nose and inhaled deeply before growling and ripping the material to shreds.  His bastard grandchilde’s scent was all over her panties, and must’ve been all over her.  They had fucked on his desk .  He felt himself shake with rage as he stood to leave, stomping towards the elevators.  He needed to be out on the streets.  Something—or maybe even someone—would die painfully this night.