Splinter

 

Part 1

 

**************

 

SPLINTER by Rheanna (ruthhanna@freenet.co.uk) and Yahtzee (Yahtzee63@aol.com) **************

 

 

***************Chapter  6***************

 

 

 

Cordelia felt her stomach clench painfully. For a moment, she couldn't think, couldn't speak, couldn't hear anything but the rushing of her own blood in her ears. "What?"

 

The others were all staring at Angel with differing levels of displeasure and disbelief. "This Angelus -- has his soul?" Wesley finally asked.

 

"Angel, that's crazy," Cordelia said. "Angelus tried to turn me. God, he was going to rape me --- when I passed out, he was taking his belt off to do it --"

 

"That's not why he took the belt off," Angel said. "He made a tourniquet for your arm. He's the one who saved your life, Cordelia. Not me." He motioned at his own belt, which was still at his own waist.

 

Cordelia flashed back to that moment in the library when she lay beneath Angelus, feeling his Adam's Apple rub against her skin as he drank up the blood spilling from the open veins in her arm. That moment of pure pain and terror and helplessness -- not Angelus?

 

No. Not possible.

 

"Back up," Gunn said. "You're saying Angelus saved her?"

 

"If he -- you -- he -- Angelus wanted to save Cordelia, why did he try to kill her in the first place?" Lorne said, his tone carefully reasonable.

 

"I can't imagine," Angel said. "In the same way I can't imagine why I would do any of the things he's done here -- but I know what I know. He has his soul."

 

"How could you do this stuff if you had your soul?" Gunn said.

 

"That's -- not -- Angel," Cordelia said. "No way. I don't believe it."

 

"It is," Angel said. "Why else would he have saved you, Cordelia? Why not carry through with the murder? I can tell you, without my soul, I never would have stopped. Never."

 

"You're -- you're just being paranoid," Cordelia said. "That's it. Paranoid like always. Well, take your guilt trip on your next vacation. Angel, you couldn't have done all this. Destroying the world, or blinding me or -- or killing Buffy! You believe that, don't you? There's no way you would ever have killed Buffy. Not with your soul."

 

Angel was very still. "I can't imagine doing that," he said. "But -- but I must have."

 

Wesley shook his head slowly. "Giles said she was dead -- and I assumed..." He  trailed off. "He didn't actually say that Angelus was responsible." Wesley looked strange; Cordelia realized that he was actually starting to buy into Angel's crazy theory. His eyes reflected a kind of unpleasant energy -- fear masquerading as anger -- that she hadn't seen in a long time -- not since they'd been afraid Angel was murdering those people, cutting crosses in their cheeks --

 

Cordelia's memory flashed to Angelus' blade, cutting into her own skin. And she realized, with a lurch of fear, that she was starting to believe Angel too.

 

No.

 

She blurted out, "Think about this, would you? Like any old demon-of-the-week could take out Buffy. Wait, I'll prove it. Where's the phone?"

 

Lorne fetched it for her, and Cordelia checked with directory assistance, then pressed 1 to pay for the exorbitant connection fee. As she waited for the connection to be made, she heard Gunn say to Angel, "I'm hoping, for your sake, that we find out a soul-free Angelus did something real bad to your ex. Because I am not ready to hear that you can do something like that. Or like what we saw today."

 

"Cordelia's face was a ruin," Wesley said. "Could you have done that to her? Answer me. I want to hear this."

 

"I can't imagine it," Angel said hoarsely. He was sitting in the center of the room, Cordelia noticed; the attention of the group was focused solely on him, as if he were on trial. Maybe he was. "But I -- Wesley, I don't know what I could have done. I just know what I am."

 

"Does it matter if -- Angelus -- has his soul or not?" Fred said.

 

"Oh, yes," Wesley said. He was glowering at Angel now, his stare cold and penetrating in a way Cordelia hadn't known it could be. "It matters very much."

 

"But not compared to the actual problem of the universe collapsing --" Fred said. Cordelia rolled her eyes. Fred clearly needed to get her priorities straight.

 

At last, Cordelia heard a click as, at the other end of the line, someone lifted the phone. She motioned at the others to keep quiet.

 

"Hello?"

 

"Xander? Hey, it's Cordelia! Good ol' Cordy from Sunnydale High and vampire slayage of yore. Now, I know we haven't kept up like we should have after the bitter, vindictive breakup, and you probably heard I was in the nuthouse and everything. But I just wanted to touch base, and, um, ask you some questions that might sound -- very, VERY strange -- oh, for Pete's sake," Cordelia sighed. "I forget I'm talking to someone who lives on a Hellmouth. I'm not your Cordelia. I'm from an alternate universe."

 

"Check. What's up?"

 

"I have to ask you a really difficult question. But the answer is going to tell us something we definitely need to know, okay?"

 

"I'm ready for any difficult questions you want to throw at me," Xander said cheerily. "Except chemistry. Not so good at that."

 

Cordelia took a deep breath. "Xander, how did Buffy die?"

 

The phone was silent for a while. When Xander spoke again, his voice was subdued. "She died the night after her mother's funeral. She was all alone -- she said she wanted to be alone, so we left her. We never should have done that. A demon caught up with her."

 

"You're absolutely certain about that?"

 

"Oh, I'm certain," Xander said bitterly. "It was a -- Giles said it was a Pavneq. We found it two days later. It kept her scalp as a trophy. Thing is, Pavneq demons aren't even all that strong. She could have fought it if she'd wanted to. But Buffy -- she went through a lot, those last few months, and I -- I don't think she wanted to fight anymore." There was a long silence on the other end of the line. "Is that all you needed to know?"

 

"Yeah," Cordelia said quietly. "That was it. Thanks, Xander."

 

"Hey, am I, you know -- cool in your universe?"

 

"Nope. Sorry."

 

"Figures."

 

The phone went dead, and Cordelia put it down. Her whole body felt numb.

 

Angelus didn't kill Buffy.

 

Angel didn't kill Buffy.

 

There's no Angelus, she realized. There's just the same Angel who's sitting here in this room. The same one who tried to kill me, tried to turn me --

 

She turned to the others and forced the words out. "Buffy died the night after her Mom's funeral. A demon got her."

 

"In our universe, I was there -- I would have protected her -- " Angel's face twisted briefly in pain. Finally, he said, "He has his soul. I don't know why he's doing all this. But I know he's not Angelus, not really. We're trying to stop someone who -- who thinks like I do. So that might help us predict what he's going to do. When he's going to do it. I -- I realize this is disturbing -- it is for me too -- but we have to use this to our --"

 

"You tore out her eyes," Wesley said. "With your own hands. With your soul in your heart."

 

"I must have," Angel said brokenly.

 

The significance of what Xander had said, what it meant, burrowed its way deeper into Cordelia's mind. She stared at her arm. Felt herself start to shake. "That was Angel. Angel did this. Oh, my God."

 

"No," Fred said. "This is our Angel. And he didn't do any of that. So if we could just get back to the important things --"

 

"This is important!" snapped Wesley.

 

"No, it's not!" Fred was almost shouting. "We need to be -- focused -- and calm -- the world is ending!"

 

"Good point," Lorne said. "Well made. Maybe if we dealt with that little matter for a moment --"

 

He started talking, but Cordelia wasn't listening. Yeah, she thought. Her world was ending. It had been a nice world, too, for a little while: she'd believed in Bad Angelus and Good Angel, and it was okay to hate one and let the other buy you lunch. But the truth was that the gulf between them wasn't as wide as she'd wanted to believe it was and, really, she'd known it since he'd threatened her just to get a book.

 

Whatever it was that had opened back up in her heart for Angel these past couple of months -- Cordelia could feel it closing over, sealing up, leaving only the pain and the scar.

 

"Calm?" Gunn said, cutting Lorne off mid-sentence. "Calm? We just found out that Angel can go all homicidal and world-destroying even with his soul on board."

 

"We knew that already," Wesley said. His voice had gone utterly cold. "We've known it since he left those lawyers to die."

 

"Hey, a little attorneycide is a dangerous thing, but it's kind of a far cry from destroying the world, right?" Lorne said. Angel was looking Wesley in the face, but his expression was distant, as though he had withdrawn deep within himself.

 

The energy in the room was beyond strange now, Cordelia realized; she could almost feel the pent-up anger and fear and blame solidifying between them, pushing them apart.  She laughed weakly. "I was just getting ready to trust you again. I am such an idiot."

 

"I can't control what I've done in this universe --" Angel began.

 

"Then who's to say you can control what you'll do in future?" Wesley said. "We can't. Can you? Well, can you?"

 

Angel's face was ashen. "No, I can't. I can't. No matter how hard I try -- I can't ever say that I'm safe."

 

"You killed Wesley," Gunn said. "You killed my friends. You turned Cordelia into something you can't even imagine, you son of a bitch --"

 

"Stop it!" Fred shouted. "We have to concentrate on what's in front of us right now. Not what might happen, or might have happened. That's just going to tie you all up in knots -- believe me, I know --"

 

"Where do you get off attempting to lecture us?" Wesley snapped. "Yesterday you couldn't fixate on anything more substantial than a Taco Bell."

 

"Hey," Angel said. "Lay off Fred. This isn't her fault. It's mine."

 

"And how gracious it is of you to admit it so readily," Wesley said acidly. "Yes, this is all your fault. It's your fault that Cordelia is blind and insane. It's your fault that innocent people have been killed. And I can't help remembering that you're also responsible for murdering me. Given all the things you're responsible for, I think I am entirely justified in echoing your words from a few months ago. Angel -- you're fired."

 

"Don't let this hit you on the way out," Gunn said, opening the door.

 

Night had fallen. Angel stared out into the darkness. Without turning around, he said, "I knew this was wrong. I knew I'd only end up hurting you in the end. I shouldn't ever have dragged you into this."

 

"No, you shouldn't have." Cordelia loosened the belt tied around her upper arm, slipped it off. Her arm throbbed and prickled as the blood flow returned, and she could feel the pain of the ugly stitches across her wrist. "You know, I always thought you didn't have a choice about how you were. But in this universe, you chose to drive me insane and cut my eyes out. Can you tell me why you made that choice?"

 

Angel's voice was barely a whisper as he said, "No."

 

Evenly, Cordelia said, "Then I can't trust your choices anymore, and until I can, I don't want to see you again."

 

Angel was outside the door now. He turned to go, and Gunn started to shut the door behind him.

 

But before he could close it, Fred was following Angel out of the apartment. "I'm coming too."

 

Angel stopped, turned around. "You should stay --" he began, and stopped. He was looking at Fred as if he'd never seen her before, and there was an odd, and oddly familiar, expression on his face. Cordelia recognized it; she'd only ever seen him look at one other person that way.

 

If he didn't know how Fred feels before, she thought, he does now.

 

After long hesitation, Angel managed to finish the sentence. "You should stay with the others. They need you to get home."

 

"So do you," Fred said simply, looking up at Angel in unabashed devotion. Poor pathetic girl, Cordelia thought, with something closer to contempt than pity. She silently thanked whatever trick of fate had kept her from ever falling for Angel herself.

 

"This isn't open for debate --"

 

"I'm not in Pylea anymore. I'm not a slave. I do what I want to do, and I want to stay with you."

 

"Angel might look like a man, but he's a monster," Wesley said. "A monster with a soul, but still a monster. You won't be repaid well for your trust, Fred."

 

"I already have been," Fred said, with more ferocity than Cordelia had previously given her credit for. "I'm going wherever Angel goes."

 

"And there's my cue," Lorne said. He gathered up his shopping bags. "There's a little incense in there from Rick's -- keep it to remember me by. Though, if I'd known this was going to be my legacy, I would have gotten something besides Mango Delight."

 

Cordelia looked at him incredulously. "You're going with them?"

 

"Love you guys, honestly. But Fred goes where Angel goes, and I go where Fred goes," he said, heading to her side. "A physicist with expertise in multiple dimensions seems like a really good person to have handy right about now. And -- if I may make one little suggestion --"

 

"What's that?" Gunn said.

 

"We'll promise not to go home without you if you promise not to go home without us," Lorne said.  "Whichever team puts the answer together first gets bragging rights -- but they help the others out. There's some bad blood in this room, but I don't think anybody here actually wants to see anybody else die. Particularly me, because I'm just so gosh-darned endearing. You can find me at the same place you always have. Deal?"

 

After a moment, Cordelia nodded. "Deal," she said.

 

Lorne nodded, and left, closing the door behind him.

 

***

 

There were 68 rooms in the Hyperion, and not one of them contained anything noteworthy, unless you found dead bodies interesting.

 

Darla didn't. At least, not any longer. In nearly four centuries, she'd seen -- and been responsible for -- enough deaths that corpses had lost much of their novelty value.

 

Novelty. Freshness. She craved both and had experienced neither in too long. Darla descended the stairs into the hotel lobby, dragging one finger along the banister as she went. By the time she'd reached the bottom, her index finger was black and a long trail was visible in the thick dust that coated the railing. She wrinkled her nose in distaste. Nothing in Angelus' latest folly had been fresh for a very long time.

 

In the short period she'd spent at the hotel, Darla had learned to hate the place with a fervor. It was too hot by day and too cold by night. Nothing worked properly; fifteen bathrooms on the second floor alone, and the shower in every last one of them leaked. Worst of all was the smell -- a miasma of decay hung over the whole building, polluting the air with the stench of  irreversible disintegration.

 

She smiled grimly to herself as she crossed the lobby. Really, she should feel right at home.

 

The office behind the front desk was cluttered and dark, but Darla knew exactly where to find what she needed. When she returned to the lobby, she was carrying two bottles and a glass. She set the glass on top of the filthy reception desk and half-filled it with vodka.

 

She'd wanted to go somewhere else. She'd suggested it. Then she'd wheedled and cajoled. Finally she'd threatened. But her threats were empty these days, and they both knew it. The balance of power had shifted between them; just like everything else lately, the rules were changing faster than she could keep up.

 

Darla poured more vodka into the glass, until it was full. She put the bottle of tonic to one side, unopened.

 

An angry mewl and the scratch of claws on wood made her look up.

 

The cat sat on top of the reception desk, watching Darla with a mixture of hostility and suspicion. It was the same animal she'd seen more and more often around the hotel in the past weeks -- its mangy gray fur and ragged left ear made it easily recognizable. But now that she had the opportunity to study it up close for the first time, she also saw how thin it was. It looked ill. It must be a stray, she decided.

 

The cat looked at the vodka bottle and licked its chops.

 

An alcoholic cat. Well, that was new. Darla was amused.

 

"A toast," she said, holding out her glass to it: "To those of us with multiple lives."

 

Frightened by the sudden movement, the cat hissed loudly and swiped at her hand. Darla dropped the glass, swore as the liquor soaked into the faded carpet. When she held up her hand, it was marked with white-edged slits where sharp claws had broken the skin. Darla swore again, raised her arm to strike back --

 

-- and laughed instead.

 

The cat was feral, untrustworthy and vicious. Darla decided she liked it.

 

It mewled again, got up and began to move in tight circles on top of the reception desk. At the same time, Darla felt the beginnings of faint vibrations rising up through the building's foundations, shaking her to the core. Too late, she realized the cat hadn't been spooked by her, but by something else.

 

Damn it, not another one --

 

As the building began to shake harder, she ran to the door that led to the hotel basement. Halfway across the lobby, she went back for the vodka. The quake was already in progress by the time she got back to the top of the basement stairs. The last thing she saw before she closed the door behind her was the cat streaking toward the Hyperion's back entrance.

 

The building was shaking so hard now it was difficult to keep her balance as she went down the stairs -- she put one hand against the wall for balance and clutched the bottle in the other. She knew she was no safer down here than above, probably even less so, but the old instincts had protected her for a long time, and Darla wasn't about to stop listening now. When threatened, get underground.

 

At the bottom of the stairs, the tremors grew so strong it was impossible to stay on her feet, so she fell into a crouching position, hands over her head, bottle of vodka stabilized between her feet. Around her, the accumulated junk of the hotel's last years as a going concern shook and banged against Angelus' more recent additions to the collection. In one corner, a standard lamp fell over, the bulb shattering with a pop, while the manacles attached to the far wall rattled against each other.

 

It had to stop soon. They never lasted this long --

 

There was a crash from the other end of the basement, so loud that it briefly drowned out the deafening roar of the quake.

 

And then it was over.

 

Darla lifted the bottle and took a long, deep drink. Feeling only marginally more calm, she looked cautiously around the basement. Apart from a liberal scattering of broken china and dented weaponry, she was relieved to find nothing fundamentally different. The quake must have been centered in some other part of the city.

 

A scraping sound made her start: the trapdoor which led to the sewers underneath the hotel was opening. Darla lifted a sword which had fallen from its mounting on the wall and landed near her feet. She was almost certain she knew who was coming; after a quake, however, it wasn't wise to depend on usual expectations.

 

The trapdoor flipped over on its hinges and banged against the concrete floor. This time, at least, her expectations were correct: the shape that emerged slowly, pulling itself with difficulty up into the basement, was Angelus.

 

Relieved, Darla lowered the sword and went to help him. Unceremoniously, she hauled him through the trapdoor so that he was sitting at the edge of the hole. As she helped him, she noticed that his shirt and coat were heavily bloodstained, and he was holding his left arm awkwardly. But his skin was warm to the touch and there were still traces of blood on his lips. He'd fed recently.

 

"What happened to you?"

 

Angelus didn't reply. Instead he pointed at the bottle sitting on the ground behind her. "Give me that."

 

"Someone's had a bad day." She handed him the bottle, and watched with regret as he gulped down what remained of the vodka. "So, did you kill anyone special?"

 

"No."

 

She frowned. "Did you get around to checking out your old friends' new home?"

 

"No."

 

And that, apparently, was all she was getting. No, "Thank you, Darla, for spending the whole of last night staring at the side of an apartment building. I really appreciate how you endured being cramped and bored on my account." Of course, there'd been a time when he would no more have thanked her for anything than she would have let him: it was a weak, human affectation. So why did she want to hear him say it now?

 

"So, you haven't seen them yet." Wonderful, she thought. Another night of pacing lay ahead.

 

"I saw them. I went to the library to prepare the next site. They were there." The empty bottle slipped out of his hand and through the trapdoor to the sewers, where it landed somewhere far below with a faint splash. Now that she was close to him, Darla saw the gash on his forearm, sealing over already but nevertheless still deep.

 

She took his hand and tugged at it until he stood up. "You should forget about them. They don't matter. They're just shadows, like everything else. They'll be gone with the next shakeup. They're probably gone already."

 

"They're real," Angelus said. There was a quality in his voice -- conviction, animation -- that had been missing for so long she had almost forgotten what it sounded like. It reminded her of the vitality that had first drawn her to him, so long ago now --

 

Darla moved a little closer to him. He didn't notice. Distracted, he said, "I thought she was like Cordelia -- but she is Cordelia --  she tasted more real, more alive than I ever thought --"

 

"And you drank her up." Darla slipped her arms around his body and stretched up to press her mouth against his. For a second he resisted, then his lips parted, just enough to let her tongue inside his mouth. He tasted of blood and cheap liquor. Always a potent mixture.

 

She kissed him harder, ran her hands lightly over his back, then brought them around the front of his body so they rested on the waistband of his pants. His belt was missing -- odd, because he always wore one -- and it took only a second to undo the zipper, work her fingers between layers of fabric and skin. Already she could feel him hardening at her touch.

 

He turned slightly, trying to break the contact. She expected this; it was part of the game. He could never resist for very long.

 

"No," he said.

 

"Yes," Darla said, and ran her nails lightly down his length. She felt his whole body stiffen against her as he tipped his head back, shut his eyes and gasped involuntarily. He wouldn't stop now; she had him.

 

It was good to know some games were still played by the old rules.

 

Again he maneuvered away from her, but this time he made no real effort to escape her touch. She circled with him; they were turning around on the spot, slow dancing without music.

 

Darla turned, opened her eyes just long enough to see --

 

"Angelus!"

 

At the far end of the basement, the brass-framed mirror which had formerly had place of honor over the reception desk was propped at an angle against the wall. It must have fallen during the quake, Darla realized -- that had been the final crash she had heard. The sheet which had covered the mirror lay in a crumpled heap at its base, revealing that the impact had broken the glass. A spider's web of cracks radiated outwards from its center; instead of one mirror, there were now a dozen, each one reflecting a slightly different aspect of the basement.

 

And each fragment also reflected, in the midst of the junk and debris, two figures caught in their old dance.

 

The expression on the face of Darla's reflection was one of consummate shock; Angelus' image simply nodded. "I saw my reflection in the bathrooms at the library," he said.

 

Darla gaped at him. "And you didn't think that was worth mentioning?" She pointed at the multiplicity of reflections. Simultaneously, the reflections pointed back at her. "This isn't possible."

 

"Everything's possible now," Angelus said. "Even the things that aren't."

 

He stared for a moment at the mirror, and at himself reflected in it, holding Darla. Then he broke contact with her and zipped up his pants. "The quakes are getting stronger. And they're coming more frequently. Come on."

 

At least something was coming more frequently, Darla thought sourly as she followed him up the basement stairs. At the top, she waited behind him as he tried to open the door; it opened halfway, then stuck. Angelus leaned against it, tried to force it fully open. The door refused to budge an inch further. He squinted through the narrow gap at the lobby beyond, and frowned. "Something's changed."

 

"What?"

 

He shook his head. "I'm not sure..."

 

The gap was wide enough to squeeze through, so Darla did. The hotel lobby was uncomfortably bright after the basement's dark shelter, and it took her a moment to understand what she was seeing.

 

What she was looking at was impossible.

 

The lobby's main doors and the area next to the reception desk were exactly as she had left them. But the alcove by the back entrance, next to the stairs, was different.

 

Bones, bleached white and fused together in impossible ways, erupted from the floor, ripping up the carpet and scraping against the stair rails as they twisted and climbed toward the ceiling. Fingerbones sprouted from femurs; elsewhere a humerus ended in a dangling collection of teeth. The structure spread out as it grew higher, branches tapering into smaller and finer bones.

 

Suspended from the end of each branch was a human rib cage, the bones bending together at the top and bottom to create an enclosed space. Each cage of bones, except one, held a collection of ragged feathers which might once have been a songbird.

 

Darla stared at the tree of bones. She had grown wearily used to the endless stream of changes and inconsistencies that had lately undermined any attempt at a normal daily existence, but this was something new again. This change in reality wasn't just something different, or out of place -- it was crazily wrong, impossible. The bone-tree could only exist in a world that had stopped making sense.

 

She heard a grunt, and looked around to see Angelus forcing his way out of  the basement behind her.

 

He stared at the bone-tree for a long time, his expression unreadable. Then, unexpectedly, he put his arms around Darla's waist and pulled her toward him. He touched her with barely-suppressed violence, as if the closeness of such a shrine to death had finally stirred a long-buried sense of urgency in him.

 

This was the beginning of the end, and he knew it.

 

At the top of the bone-tree, the broken and twisted body of a stray cat stared down at Darla from between the smooth white bars of the highest rib cage, one ragged ear moving in the draft.

 

"How much longer?" she asked.

 

She felt Angelus' fangs scrape her neck, his cold lips on her skin. "Not long."

 

*  *  *

 

"I'll leave you at the Longhorn," Angel said. "You'll be safe there."

 

From the passenger side of the Plymouth, Lorne looked at him. "I'm getting two things from that. One -- you're going somewhere else, and, two --  the somewhere else you're planning on going is emphatically not safe."

 

"I'm going back to the Hyperion," Angel said flatly.

 

Fred's face creased in concern. "The other you might be there. The bad you."

 

"That's the idea," Angel said. He was surprised by how calm he felt. "It'll be hard to drive a stake through his heart if he isn't."

 

Lorne lifted his hands and made a T-shape in the air in front of his chest. "Time OUT. What precisely is that going to achieve? Apart from dragging your psyche to even more convoluted depths of Freudian complexity?"

 

"What if you fight him and lose?" Fred asked, sounding upset. "I mean, you should wait -- or get a plan, or --"

 

Lorne twisted around to address her directly. "Good thinking, munchkin. Just one flaw -- that approach would require our very own dark and stormy knight here to approach this situation rationally. And he doesn't want to do that. He wants to go and start a fight which won't help us get home but which will probably end up with him being swept up by a dustpan and brush. Anf even if he wins, it won't achieve anything."

 

"It'll make me feel better," Angel said.

 

"No," Lorne said, "it won't. And you know why it won't? Even if you went over there right now, even if you reduced him to a small pile of ashes and scattered them to the four winds, you wouldn't feel any better. Because YOU would still be standing."

 

As Lorne spoke, Angel saw again the scene from the library restrooms; Cordelia, slumped in a wide slick of her own blood, a mirror image of himself crouched over her. And when Angelus had looked up, voiced the thought in Angel's mind, met Angel's gaze -- at that moment, Angel had known the truth. If the eyes were a window on the soul, Angel had seen his own essence staring back at him.

 

And now Cordelia, Wesley and Gunn had seen it too; not in his face, or in the shape of the demon he had been in Pylea, but in the legacy of his actions in this universe. He had murdered Wesley, tortured Cordelia until she broke.

 

A monster with a soul.

 

"Now," Lorne said, "what say we take a few steps back from all this and just chill until we regain our sense of perspective, hmm? How about dinner?"

 

"I'm hungry," Fred said, a little too quickly.

 

Lorne smiled broadly. "Then I declare the motion, 'This house would prefer to have dinner than get involved in a meaningless fight to the death' carried two votes to one. Driver, I spy an outpost of old Mexico ahead which should suit the senorita in the back.  Pull in."

 

"What is this place called? Taco Casa?" Fred wrinkled her nose. "Maybe we could go another couple blocks for a Taco Bell --"

 

"Don't push it," Lorne muttered.

 

At least, Angel thought as he parked, this was one way of getting them out of the car. If necessary, he could disappear while they ate.

 

Inside, the restaurant was busy, and there were few tables left. After a brief search, they found a vacant booth, hidden in a secluded corner behind a bank of cheap, fake potted plants. While Angel and Lorne slid into the turquoise-plastic seats, Fred joined the lengthy line at the counter.

 

"You know," Lorne began conversationally. "It's at times like this I like to remember the immortal words of --"

 

"I don't want to hear it," Angel said.

 

Lorne was undaunted. "You don't know what I'm going to tell you, yet."

 

"I don't care what you're going to tell me. I don't want to hear homilies or pearls of wisdom. I don't want to be cheered up, encouraged, reassured or heartened. I don't want to think. I don't want to talk."

 

"Excuse me. Hey, excuse me! I want to speak to the manager."

 

The voice was so loud that Angel looked around despite himself. A group of young men had shoved their way to the front of the line and were leaning over the counter. Angel looked around for Fred and saw that she had been pushed to one side. She was frowning in obvious annoyance. A woman in a staff uniform with a jacket had been summoned from the back of the kitchen area. She smiled politely as she asked, "Do you have a complaint, sir?"

 

The leader of the gang was dressed in a biker's leather coat and pants. He grinned at his companions before facing her over the counter. "Do you serve black people in this restaurant?"

 

"Sir, we serve everybody who wants to eat here. Now, if you'd like to place your order --"

 

"Do you serve white people?"

 

"We serve everybody," repeated the manager. Her smile had vanished, and many of the people behind the bikers in the line were grumbling loudly.

 

"Do you serve yellow people?"

 

The manager's tone was openly frosty now. "We serve everyone."

 

"So -- you serve all kinds of people. That's what you're saying." The biker turned to his companions again, then back to the restaurant manager. "Well, that's great. We'd like to order some black people, some white people and some yellow people. To go."

 

The biker vamped out and lunged over the counter, grabbing the manager by the lapels of her jacket. As he hauled her toward him, the rest of the gang bared their fangs and began rounding up the restaurant patrons closest to them.

 

Lorne exhaled heavily. "Vampires. Loud, obnoxious -- and they never know how to conduct themselves in public." He looked at Angel. "Present company excepted."

 

"I'll handle this," Angel said.

 

He stood up and made his way through the melee. The biker vamp was leering into the face of a terrified middle-aged man when Angel tapped the vampire on the shoulder. "You really don't want to do this."

 

The vampire's teeth hovered over his victim's neck. Then he dropped the man, who passed out and slumped on to the floor at his feet. The vampire turned around to face Angel. "Maybe you'd like to tell me just why the FUCK not --" He froze.

 

"Because," Angel said quietly, "I've had a very, very bad day. And if you make it any worse, you'll regret it. But not for long."

 

"Angelus." The vampire blinked. In a second, his attitude changed entirely, from predatory self-confidence to abject deference. "I'm -- we're -- I didn't know this was your turf, man. We thought you only hunted on the north side." He reached down and picked up the limp body at his feet, exposing the neck. "Uh, hey, you want first bite?"

 

Angel snarled and knocked the unconscious man from the vampire's grip. "Get out of here." He stood back and addressed the other members of the gang. "Get out. Now."

 

Biker Vamp spread his hands and stepped back. This wasn't merely deference, Angel realized. It was terror. "Sure, man. Whatever you say. We're gone, we're outta here." He nodded to the rest of his gang: "Moving out!"

 

Slowly, the vampires began to assemble in the empty space in front of the main counter. All around the restaurant, patrons sat perfectly still, or cowered behind chairs and tables. The manager was pressed against the base of the counter, her breathing shallow and her eyes wide.

 

The air was saturated with fear, and it smelled so good --

 

The vampires were halfway to the door now. The leader turned around and, as an afterthought, gestured around the silent, fearful restaurant patrons. "I mean, man, you want 'em, they're yours. Plenty more out there. Just take 'em. Take 'em all."

 

Suddenly, Angel felt a faint tremor through the soles of his boots. It grew rapidly more intense, and within seconds the tables throughout the restaurant were shaking drinks and plastic trays of half-eaten Mexican food on to the floor.

 

Fred had fallen to her knees; she was clinging to a giant cardboard burrito for the little support it could provide. As Angel caught her gaze, she mouthed, Quake -- and then her eyes widened at something behind him.

 

He turned around, and saw what Fred had already seen.

 

The vampires were changing, transforming even as he watched. Their skin darkened, becoming scaly and rigid, like armor, while ugly spikes sprouted from their faces.

 

No, Angel thought. Please, no. Not again. Not now, not here --

 

The floor shuddered one last time as the quake ended. Angel reached out a hand to steady himself and watched with helpless revulsion as his nails lengthened into talons, his fingers twisting and becoming clawlike. He could feel the change overtaking him, twin sensations of strength and hunger surging through him, threatening to overwhelm him --

 

But this time, they didn't. 

 

He felt the same intoxicating rush of power he had in Pylea, like a red mist falling behind his eyes, but somehow it was still possible to think through it. Angel pushed the table he was leaning on and watched with satisfaction as he was able to rend the metal base in two. He reveled in his strength, and in the knowledge that he was still in control.

 

All the vampires had now degenerated into their pure, demonic forms. Angel snarled at them. He was looking forward to this.

 

He picked out the gang's leader, then rushed him. The collision was brutal, the pain sweet. Angel bore down on his opponent, easily pinning him down. He lifted the vampire's head and, with savage enjoyment, slammed it into the floor, over and over and over and over --

 

He didn't stop until the vampire's body went lax beneath him. Angel leapt to his feet, oblivious to the screams and hubbub around him. He looked around the restaurant, taking in the plastic molded benches and tables, the plastic displays advertising plastic food positioned between plastic greenery -- dammit, wasn't there anything made of wood in here?

 

He heard a noise from behind him and turned around just as another of the vampires gave a guttural cry of rage and started to run at him. Bending down, Angel lifted Biker Vamp's unconscious body and threw it at the approaching vamp, hard. The force of the impact slammed the running vampire into the table behind him, while Biker Vamp landed on the serving counter, where he slid along the metal surface for some distance before flopping out of view behind it, in the kitchen area.

 

Angel ran, jumped and hurdled the counter with ease. He heard roars behind him as the remaining vampires, galvanized by his attack on their leader and their superior numbers, started to follow.

 

The kitchen staff had fled; there was no one to stop Angel tipping over the nearest deep fat fryer. A tide of slippery, sizzling fat washed over the floor, instantly raising the temperature in the kitchen by ten degrees. As the slick reached the fallen form of the lead vampire, his scaly skin started to blacken and smoke.

 

Two more vampires jumped the counter successfully, only to fall immediately on the treacherous floor. They screamed as glutinous layers of boiling oil splashed on to their hands and faces, raising ugly red welts on the flesh and filling the air with the smell of cooking flesh.

 

Angel smiled, grimly satisfied.

 

A single gas flame somehow still burnt on the stove behind him. Angel ripped a handful of paper towels from the dispenser above the sink and held them over the blue flame until they caught alight. Then he threw the burning mass into the middle of the pool of oil, and basked in the whoosh of heat and light that resulted.

 

When the flames had died down, he stepped over the faint, charred stains that marked where the vampires had incinerated, and returned to the main part of the restaurant.

 

It was completely empty.

 

Patrons and staff had fled, and the restaurant -- which not ten minutes earlier had been a busy, congenial establishment -- was a derelict husk. The fire in the kitchen had triggered the automatic sprinkler system; sprays of water drummed the floor, turning abandoned half-eaten meals into unappetizing mush.

 

Angel  looked around feeling, if anything, disappointed. For the first time since they had arrived, he felt he'd achieved something. The simple, cleansing efficiency of the fight had left him feeling focused, battle-ready, eager for more --

 

He knew what he wanted to do. Angelus. He would face Angelus like this. Show him who was stronger, Make him suffer just as he had made Wesley and Cordelia suffer --

 

"Angel?"

 

He turned around. Not everyone had gone, after all.

 

"THIS is what he looks like when he gets out of the bed on the wrong side?" Lorne asked. "It's more disturbing than Cher without makeup."

 

"Angel?" repeated Fred.

 

Angel opened his mouth to reassure her -- and couldn't.

 

He tried again, and heard himself make only a series of incomprehensible grunts. This form, he realized, simply wasn't equipped for speech.

 

He pointed at the door, then at them -- I'm going; you stay.

 

Fred took a step forward, but Lorne placed a gently restraining hand on her arm. "I wouldn't, sweetie. Handy survival hint: if something with claws that sharp wants to leave, don't get between it and the exit."

 

"But -- it's Angel."

 

"Not right now, it isn't."

 

I am, he wanted to say. And there was more he wanted to tell them: that he was going, but he would be back. That everything would be fine once he'd found Angelus and made him pay. But not speaking -- not being able to communicate with his friends anymore -- appeared to be the price of his powerful new form. He started to make for the door.

 

Behind him, he heard Fred say, "Angel?"

 

He looked back, suddenly overcome with the urge to make one last effort to speak to her. Fred had moved closer to Lorne, who had placed his hands on her shoulders. They had no way to be sure he was coming back -- but he would, just as soon as he had faced Angelus, made everything right again.

 

Except that it wouldn't be, Angel thought suddenly. Killing Angelus wouldn't get them home any sooner. Or get his friends back.

 

And allowing himself to lash out in anger -- to start a violent, unnecessary brawl -- hadn't brought either of those objectives any closer to being achieved, either.

 

He could have let the biker vampire and his gang walk away, Angel realized. Angelus' reputation in this universe was obviously such that they'd been ready to leave simply at his command. But he'd chosen to fight; he'd wasted time and energy which would have been better used to wage other battles. More important ones.

 

"It is Angel," Fred said. "It is. Look at his eyes."

 

Lorne's voice belied his reservations. "Actually, I was looking at the teeth and claws."

 

Angel raised his hands, forced himself to look at the razor-sharp talons. They were perfect weapons, ideal for tearing and mauling. But these hands couldn't hold a pen to write. Couldn't touch someone else without piercing fragile skin.

 

He closed his eyes, sought a control he wasn't sure he had --

 

-- and when he opened them again, the hands he was looking at were bloodied and covered in scratches, but were unmistakably those of a man, not a monster.

 

Fred was smiling broadly. "You came back again."

 

"I came back," Angel said. It was a relief to hear his own voice.

 

"So," Lorne asked dryly, "have you successfully exorcised your self destructive urges for now, or would you still like to go and fight your only-slightly-more-insane half to the death, just to round the evening off?"

 

Feeling chastened, Angel said, "I'm not going to go looking for him tonight."

 

"So what are we going to do?" asked Fred.

 

Angel looked around the ruined restaurant, taking in the extent of the destruction. Fire sprinklers still hissed in the kitchen area, where burning oil had reduced most of the equipment to warped and blackened husks. In the main restaurant, everything which hadn't been bolted down had been scattered in the quake or used as a projectile in the subsequent fight. This particular Taco Casa wouldn't be serving food again any time soon, if ever.

 

"For a start," Angel said, "I think we should just skip dinner."

 

 

 

****************Chapter 7****************

 

"His verbes, consenus rescissus est," Wesley concluded firmly, and he openedhis clenched fist, allowing a handful of dried herbs to scatter on the floorof Cordelia's apartment.

 

"That's it?" Gunn asked.

 

Wesley brushed his hands together. "That's it."

 

"There's no..." Gunn made a vague rolling motion with his hands, "...brightlights, magic smoke, maybe a little 'no entry' sign popping up over thedoor?"

 

"It's a low-key charm, not a David Copperfield show. There are no visible effects."

 

"Then how do we know it worked?"

 

From the sofa, Cordelia said, "When Angelus comes to vamp us all, if hecan't get in, it worked."

 

"That's the test?" Gunn looked at the apartment door for a few seconds more. "I'm gonna go check the locks on the windows."

 

Wesley watched him go, frowning. When he was alone with Cordelia, he said,"I'm afraid that's something of a redundant exercise. If the disinvitationspell worked, all the thresholds are protected. If it didn't -- well,whether the window locks are secure is the least of our worries."

 

"He just needs something to do." Now it was Cordelia's turn to glancedoubtfully at the front door. "Will that keep both of them out?"

 

Wesley sat down beside her. "To be perfectly honest -- I'm not sure. This isa novel situation. But I'm confident it should revoke the invitation thatwas made to the Angel from this universe, and he is the greater threat."

 

Angel. In his mind's eye, Wesley could still see him slipping out of the door and out of their lives. The last time they'd parted like that -- a non-goodbye, loaded with silent recriminations -- Wesley had been the one leaving, carrying his few possessions with him out of the Hyperion. He'd glanced back at the hotel one last time, to see if Angel had followed them to apologize, to ask them to come back. There had still been time then to make things right.

 

But he hadn't, and now the time for making things right was long over.

 

Angel had been able to walk out of Cordelia's apartment without even looking back, Wesley thought. Maybe it's that easy, for him. Or maybe he finally realizes there's no going back.

 

After Angel had gone, for a few minutes everything had seemed -- better. Absurdly relaxed. Wesley had never kidded himself about the makeshift nature of their renewed partnership; however, he hadn't realized just how much distrust and, yes, fear of Angel still lurked beneath the surface. Coming to this universe had intensified everything -- but now that Angel was gone, he had felt certain that everything was going to get better. A ridiculous feeling, perhaps, but one he didn't seem able to shake.

 

Until the last reality quake struck, and the ceiling turned chartreuse, and all the uncertainty came rushing back in.

 

Cordelia leaned back into the cushions and Wesley was glad to note that, although she still looked tired, some color was returning to her cheeks. "I don't know, Wesley. I keep playing it over -- and over -- in my head, and I don't understand..."

 

When a minute or more had passed and she still hadn't spoken, he prompted, "Understand what?"

 

"Why we all blew up like that. How we went so long without realizing how we felt." She shook her head. "And how we could have been so wrong about Angel. I thought things were getting better, and then we go and find out --"

 

"We thought Angel could get better," Wesley said. "Obviously, he can't. Whatever apparent helpfulness or goodness he projects at any time is just -- just -- another phase he's moving through. Angel's essential nature tends to evil; in the end, he'll always return to it." He was silent for a few moments, considering this; he'd never said it aloud before. Only since reaching this universe had he allowed it to form, as a conscious, acknowledged thought, in his mind. "I only wish we'd understood that before."

 

"He saved me," Cordelia said softly. Then she frowned. "Well, he saved me from himself. I'm not sure if that counts as saveage, technically." She shook her head. "I can't even think about it now. Maybe -- when we get home -- if we get home."

 

"Oh, we'll get home," he reassured her, forcing a note of cheer into hisvoice. "I've got a few ideas we can work on. I'm becoming something of anexpert at interdimensional portal creation."

 

Cordelia smiled back. "Something else to put on the resume, right?"

 

"We'll be back home before you know it. Back to a nice, dependable universewhere no more than the usual number of vampires are trying to kill us." Wesley envisioned this new life -- a lot like the life they'd led without Angel before, although, in his imagination, greatly fortified with cases and money. "We still have the lease on our old offices, so we can start over without Angel right away. We can concentrate on the things that matter. Our work, and each other, and nursing the other Cordelia back to some semblance of sanity."

 

At that, her smile faded and a strange, clouded expression passed over herface. "Wesley -- about that other me," she began.

 

Wesley covered one of her hands with his own. "I know it's difficult to imagine," he said. "I suppose it will be even more difficult to see. But we're going to make things better for her, Cordelia. You'll see."

 

"How?" she asked harshly. Wesley looked down, surprised; instead of the weak, uncertain Cordelia he'd expected, he saw a woman who was anguished, almost angry. "I'm -- she's blind. She's insane. Knowing Angelus, she's insane for good. And you want her to go on suffering like that?"

 

"No! Cordelia, I'm trying to help her. Even if she's never -- stable -- again, I know she could come to recognize she's surrounded by people who care about her. Who love her," Wesley said, getting the last words out quickly. "What a comfort that would be to her. We can't just leave her here alone, with nobody to care for her."

 

Cordelia shook her head. "Wesley, she won't be alone if she stays here. She won't be anything. After this universe ends, she just -- won't be."

 

Wesley realized, with a jolt, that she was right; the blind, helpless Cordelia he'd seen earlier would vanish along with the rest of this splinter universe when it reached its violent end in a few days. But the thought did not reassure him. "All the more reason to rescue her. We can't just leave her here to die."

 

"You're not listening to me --"

 

"You're the one not listening to me," Wesley snapped. He knew, on one level, that it was insane to attack one Cordelia to defend another. But the image of the poor, broken woman in the asylum bed hung in his mind, drowned out every other thought. "Angelus is trying to end this universe and kill everyone in it. Maybe we can't save this universe from collapsing forever, but we can save one person. We can undo one wrong that he's done. Just this once, I want to stop him."

 

Cordelia face contorted into something very like anger. "I thought when Angel left, this would all be over."

 

"What would all be over?"

 

"The idea that somehow this is all about him," she said, visibly struggling to remain calm. "That he's so much more important than --"

 

She was interrupted by a noise behind them. Wesley turned quickly,surprising himself anew with how tense he was, and relaxed when he saw Gunn.

 

"Bedroom window's open," Gunn said.

 

"I shouldn't worry," Wesley began, then stopped as he noticed the recent cuton his face. Before he could say anything, another Gunn -- their Gunn --came back into the living room.

 

Cordelia looked first at one Gunn, then the other. "Just when I thoughttoday couldn't get more confusing."

 

Affording Wesley and Cordelia no more than a cursory glance, Other Gunncrossed the room to face himself. "Man, I know you got your own problems. Iwouldn't ask if it wasn't --"

 

Gunn held up a hand. "What's up?"

 

"Angelus got one of my people. He got George."

 

Cordelia looked up at Wesley. "George? Didn't he help us the night you gotshot?"

 

Wesley nodded, thinking about the young man who they'd met just a few hoursearlier. The man who'd been able to talk and joke with Gunn that afternoonand who was now gone, wiped out of existence here as suddenly and violentlyas he had been in their own reality.

 

For the briefest of seconds an expression of deep, raw hurt passed overGunn's features. "George is dead --"

 

"If he was, there'd be nothing we could do about it, and I wouldn't be here," Other Gunn finished. "But he's still alive."

 

"How can you be so sure?" Wesley asked.

 

Other Gunn shrugged. "Full moon."

 

"And that means... Angelus is on a diet?" Cordelia hazarded.

 

Wesley shook his head. "It's the ritual. Angelus is going to sacrifice him-- extract his liver. And bring this reality one step closer to completecollapse."

 

Now he had Other Gunn's full attention. "This is what you were talking aboutbefore, isn't it? Down in the tunnels."

 

"Yes. The bizarre occurrences which have been happening here -- thebreakdown of reality -- Angelus is causing it." Wesley wondered briefly why he was still using the name Angelus -- but apparently Angel had taken it back, in this reality. "He's trying to destroy the world."

 

"So how do we stop him?" Other Gunn said.

 

Gunn answered, "There's this whole magic blue fire thing with the livers you can do to stabilize the universe. But it's not gonna come to that, because we're gonna get to George in time."

 

Wesley took in the fierce determination on both Gunns' faces; he'd never seen either of them so dead-set on anything. He hated to say anything to upset them further, but -- "Well -- we don't know where Angelus has taken him."

 

"The library," Cordelia said suddenly. "It's gotta be the library. Wes, theritual has to happen where the portals are, right? We know there's a portalat the library. I'm thinking Angelus wasn't there today just because hewanted to borrow the latest Harry Potter. He was, you know -- casing the joint."

 

"Ain't you one with the street talk," Other Gunn said, his lower lip crinkling in something that was almost a smile. "If we go now, we might get there in time. My truck's outside." He scowled. "If I'm lucky, it's still a truck. I keep on thinking one of these days I'm gettin' a Maserati out of this, but not yet."

 

He headed for the door, and Cordelia started to follow him. Wesley put arestraining hand on her arm. "Are you sure you're up to this?"

 

"I'm still feeling a little light headed, but I'm okay."

 

"That's not what I meant. Cordelia, you had a very -- traumatic experiencetoday. To face Angelus again..."

 

"...is exactly what I want to do," she said firmly. "Regardless of what you seem to think, I'm not victim girl, Wesley. I don't cower." She raised her head, jutting her chin out withdetermination. "Besides, if we're wrong about where Angelus is and what he'sdoing -- I don't want to be spending tonight  here alone." Without givinghim time to respond, she left.

 

Other Gunn was heading toward his truck, which was parked at the side of theroad. It appeared, Wesley noted, still to be displaying the majorcharacteristics of truckhood, but no evidence of Maseratihood.

 

He hung back, waiting until Cordelia and Other Gunn were at the vehicle.When he turned away from the door, he saw that Gunn had not moved either. "Iwas hoping we'd get an opportunity to speak privately," Wesley said. "I'mnot certain going on this rescue mission is a good idea."

 

"Not a good idea?" repeated Gunn. "What part of letting George get killedagain is a good idea?"

 

"It's not that," Wesley said quickly. "I want to help, too. But the four ofus will hardly be a match for Angelus. And this -- well, to be blunt, thisisn't our universe. In fact, if Fred is to be believed, it isn't a real universe at all."

 

"And what about the Cordy from this dimension? The one you want to bringback with us?"

 

"That's different," Wesley said before he could stop himself.

 

Gunn's face was stony. Finally, he said, "Yeah. I guess it is. You didn'tseem to have a problem making the big decisions in Pylea. Acceptable losses,right? But it's different when it's someone you know."

 

"I sent Angel into battle."

 

"Okay, then. It's different when it's somebody who matters to you. That's when it gets under your skin. Well, I know George. He matters to me. I know I wasn't there before to stop him getting killed. And I know I'm sure as hell not gonna let that happen again."

 

Abruptly, he pushed past Wesley, walking out of the apartment and toward thetwo people waiting in the truck without looking back.

 

After a moment, Wesley followed.

 

***

 

"We are not setting up our headquarters here," Angel said.

 

"Headquarters?" Lorne said. His green skin looked almost blue in the lightfrom the neon sign. "We're not setting up a mobile army unit, Sarge. We'rejust waiting in a place where the others can find us."

 

"That blue shape," Fred said uncertainly, "is that Texas?"

 

"Indeed it is, sweetpea," Lorne said. "You're coming along just beautifully.But keep those synapses firing on the question of us getting home. We canplay Carmen Sandiego some other time."

 

Angel looked doubtfully at The Longhorn, nee Caritas, which had been atranquil oasis of serenity by comparison. He could hear country musicblaring and people talking and cheering at the top of their lungs. Therhythmic pounding from inside sounded a lot like boots on wood, suggestingdancing was going on inside.

 

In other words, everyone inside The Longhorn was having a wonderful time, and Angel was scarcely in a mood to witness it.

 

"This is where we came back from Pylea. So this is a portal," Fred said.

 

Angel stared at the club again, examining it in a light he never had before-- considering it in terms of attack and defense. "The ritual -- Angelus could come here. He probably already has."

 

"And that clears up the mystery as to why I sold the place," Lorne said."One little evisceration during happy hour just kills a club's reputation."

 

Angel had decided to not to seek out Angelus for a meaningless battle -- but he realized that guarding a location where Angelus might take a victim was, in fact, just about the most prudent action he could take right now. "Let's go, then," he said, squaring his shoulders and preparing for the worst.

 

Sure enough, the jukebox was blaring as they stepped into the bright lightsof the club. Fred pushed her glasses up her nose as she gawked at thevarious dancers and drinkers. Many of the women were wearing skimpy tanktops and skin-tight jeans; Fred looked down at her oversized T-shirt and sighed. Angel thought idly how much line dancing looked like certain forms of demon possession. Coincidence? He'd have to ask Lorne sometime. For his part, Lorne was gazing at a Miller Genuine Draft neon sign at the bar with something approaching real sorrow.

 

The bouncer sidled over to them, then fixed Lorne with a stare. "Your skin --"

 

"It's actually a very funny story," Lorne said, settling his cowboy hat alittle more firmly onto his head so that it covered his horns entirely.

 

But the bouncer was grinning sympathetically. "Them damn shakeups will get you every time, won't they? You're going along, mindin' your own business, and bam!Your TV's turned into a rutabaga or something. One time last month, Isprouted a beard went down to my knees. Looked like damn Fu Manchu for therest of the day. But I got off easier than you!"

 

"It's not easy, being green," Lorne said sincerely.

 

"Tell ya what. In honor of your new skin tone, we'll fix you up with a roundof margaritas. Compliments of the house," the bouncer said.

 

Lorne smiled even more broadly. "You, sir, are the soul of generosity. If myfriends here will just get us some seats --"

 

Angel took Fred's arm and led her to one of the few empty tables. She lookedafter Lorne, who was ingratiating himself with the bartender. No doubtasking if he could get a Sea Breeze instead, Angel thought, and if his moodhad been any less dark, he would have smiled.

 

But he was also remembering standing on that stage, in that last second ofterror before beginning to sing, and looking out into the audience forWesley and Cordelia. Knowing that, no matter how bad he might be, they weregoing to support him no matter what.

 

He shut his eyes tightly.

 

"Are you okay?" Fred's timid voice made him open his eyes. She was leaningtoward him, her expression as grave and intent as a serious child's. Gentlyshe laid one hand on his forearm, her skin warm through his thin shirt.

 

"I'll be all right," Angel said dully. "Don't worry about me. Worry aboutthose equations."

 

"I can't worry about them much until I get some more paper," Fred pointedout. "Besides -- I do worry about you. I mean -- I don't worry because I'm scared -- I worry in, in a good way."

 

She blushed so deeply that Angel could see it, even in the dim lights of thebar.  He wondered at his own blindness before. "We'll get you somepaper, then --"

 

Lorne sauntered up, carrying a tray of drinks. "I took you both forsalt-on-the-rim types. Bottoms up, everyone; whatever else you want to sayabout our day, I'm pretty sure it's earned us all a stiff drink."

 

Angel obediently drank from his glass; his tongue registered the cold, butnothing else. Fred's eyes went wide as she took her first sip. She pulledback, stared at the frozen green concoction in the glass, and then begangulping the drink down. "Whoa, whoa, honey. We don't want you manipulatingdimensions under the influence," Lorne said.

 

"Sorry," she said. "It just tastes so --" Fred hung her head for a moment; then, as she looked at the table, her face lit up. "Napkins! Can I have your napkins?"

 

"Um, sure," Angel said. As she snatched them up, he looked over at Lorne."Is this some Pylea thing?" Lorne shook his head.

 

The mystery was solved moments later when Fred took out her pen and busilybegan scribbling equations on the napkins. Lorne smiled and reached acrossthe table to pat her on the shoulder. "There's more where that came from."

 

Fred didn't answer. Her mouth was screwed up in a very strange way, and thetip of her tongue poked through her lips. Angel half-smiled, recognizingwhat he already thought of as Fred's "game face."

 

"So, how are you, slugger?" Lorne said.

 

"Your fake nonchalance is normally more convincing," Angel said. "You'reslipping."

 

"Rough day," Lorne said. "Tough crowd. Speaking of which, I can't believethese guys are still listening to Garth Brooks. Take it from someonewho's met a lot of sewer demons in his day: you really do NOT want the friends that come from low places. And you haven't answered the question yet."

 

"I'm fine," Angel said.

 

"I may be less convincing than usual, but you're just less convincing, sweetcakes."

 

"What do you want me to say?" Angel's exasperation dimmed down to unease."You don't want me to sing, do you?"

 

"I think your day's been traumatic enough. God knows mine has," Lorne said.He leaned forward and put one arm on the table, a gesture Angel had learnedto associate with an impending lecture. "But it's still your responsibilityto keep going. You can't afford to derail again, not here and not now."

 

"I know," Angel said. "You don't have to worry about me."

 

"And that business in the restaurant --"

 

"Was a mistake," Angel finished for him. "I didn't want to think, didn't want to communicate. I just wanted to fight. But it didn't solve anything."

 

Lorne looked at him. "So you're going to stop fighting?" he asked.

 

"No. I'm going to start thinking." Angel leaned forward a little. "What happened to me here -- it doesn't make any sense."

 

"Pray, elaborate."

 

"Angelus having his soul," Angel explained. "I mean, I slept with Darla anddidn't lose my soul in our universe. And I didn't start trying to destroythe world. I didn't hurt Wesley and Cordelia. Even if I hadn't come to mysenses that night, I wouldn't have wanted to do anything like that. I --all I wanted to do was close myself up in the dark with Darla, so I wouldn'thave to think anything or do anything ever again. So why was it so differenthere?"

 

"Good question," Lorne said. His expression was one of grudging respect."Any theories?"

 

"Maybe -- maybe Buffy's death," Angel began, then shook his head. "No. Ifanything ever happened to Buffy, I'd want to be on this side of the fightmore than ever. That would have woken me up if nothing else did."

 

"Even with the guilt?" Lorne said. "I know what Little Miss Slayer means to you. And I know you felt like you'd let her down before."

 

"I'd feel -- even more guilty," Angel said. "But I'd have to go on for her.I wouldn't have any other choice." He paused, then looked at Lorne. "How didyou know about Buffy? I never talked to you about her."

 

"When you sing," Lorne said quietly. "There's this moment -- right beforepeople start singing, that last second when they open their mouths and takea deep breath -- that's when their souls open up. You can see a lot there,in that first flash; usually you see what's most important or precious. Yousee what matters most to people. You see what they love."

 

Angel didn't trust himself to answer aloud, but he nodded. Fred keptscribbling away on her napkins; she'd need some new ones, soon. Lornefinally said, "I thought you were going to need a Host-patented verbalbitch-slap, young man, but you're -- you're doing all right. You're stayingfocused on the actual problems at hand, keeping yourself together. I herebymove that epiphany of yours a few notches up the credibility scale."

 

"It's not that I don't care," Angel blurted out. "My friends -- I hoped thatwe -- " He shook his head. "Never mind. I can't change it now."

 

"Admitting defeat already?" Lorne said. But his voice wasn't needling, theway it often was; he was looking at Angel sympathetically. "You guys have bonds than run deep. Deeper than any of you will admit, these days. But Buffy's not the only person I've seen when you start to sing."

 

Angel looked down at the table. "I don't think they'd believe that any more. We reached a point where -- Lorne, I can't go back."

 

"Those three get their backs up, sometimes," Lorne said. "You know that. Not like you guys haven't had a falling out before."

 

"This is different," Angel said. He didn't know exactly why he was so convinced that this separation was irrevocable -- only that it was. "I don't think they'll ever want to workwith me again, after this. But maybe -- after we're back, and safe, and sometime has passed -- maybe we could -- just know each other --"

 

He looked down at the table again. Fred looked up long enough to pat hisshoulder softly and then went right back to her work.

 

Lorne, ever tactful, changed the subject. "So, something's not right withAngelus. You think maybe he lost his soul after all?"

 

"No," Angel said. "I know what I saw, and I know what he did. Angelus hashis soul, but something else happened to make him act like this. Somethingbesides Darla."

 

"What would that be?" Lorne said.

 

Angel shook his head. "That's what I don't know."

 

***

 

Cordelia had already had one crazy ride through L.A. today, courtesy of Fred; now Other Gunn was streaking through the streets as though he'd had driving lessons from Mr. Toad. And if she'd thought the streets were strange before --

 

The roads were all cobblestone now, which looked cool and quaint for about two seconds until she was reminded, with a jolt, that Gunn's truck had no shock absorbers. The scarlet-tinted streetlights above their heads cast a feverish red glow over the city. A few buildings had collapsed into rubble, but there was no sign of rescue crews. In fact, the buildings looked more like ruins -- as though they had fallen apart centuries before. Cobwebs the size of sails drifted from intact buildings, and Cordelia hoped fervently that they'd sprung into existence on their own, not been spun by four-story-high spiders.

 

In short, what had looked surreal this afternoon had become nightmarish now it was night. As much as Cordelia hated to admit it, it looked like Fred was right -- things were falling apart, and fast.

 

"Almost there," Wesley said, somewhat nervously. Other Gunn didn't slow down.

 

"I swear to God, this time I'm staking him," Other Gunn muttered as he shifted gears. "This is the night. As soon as I see him, that son of a bitch is dust."

 

That was weird to think about -- Angel-Angelus-whoever, soul intact, getting staked. To her surprise, Cordelia felt her eyes start to tear up at the thought. Remember, she thought savagely, you still have eyes. This version of you doesn't, thanks to him, thanks to him, thanks to Angel --

 

She didn't feel much better, and finally seeing the library didn't help either. The building showed signs of the damage it had suffered earlier that day -- but it too looked as though it had been abandoned for years. Vines had grown up the walls, creeping over the columns and into the windows. And even in the gloom, Cordelia could see that the vines had thorns.

 

"One more reason why I just rent movies," Gunn and Other Gunn said in unison, then stared at each other for one moment. Then, again in chorus, they said, "Let's move."

 

Cordelia opened the door and slid off Wesley's lap. Wesley got out behind her, stretching his legs as he stared up at the forbidding building. "It looks as if the power's out inside," he pointed out.

 

"The Stakemobile should still have flashlights in the back," Other Gunn said. Gunn fished around for a minute, then held up two of them.

 

"All right, then," Wesley began. "We'll have Cordelia handle the lights, as she's not really strong enough for --"

 

"Excuse me," Other Gunn said, "but who died and made you king? This is my man in here. His too," he added, with a shrug in Gunn's direction. "Nice of you to come along for the ride, but you don't call the shots around here."

 

Wesley looked cowed for a moment, but quickly straightened up and squared his shoulders. "Actually, I do. You know George better than we -- and you know this universe, as well, but I'm in charge of this unit."

 

Other Gunn looked over at Gunn, apparently expecting violent opposition. Gunn fidgeted sheepishly. Other Gunn said, "How the hell did that happen?"

 

Cordelia frowned. Exactly how had Wesley ended up in charge, anyway? They'd all gone into this as equals, but now he was the one who made the decisions. She wasn't sure exactly how that had come about, but she suspected it had something to do with being the first one to show up in the mornings.

 

"It doesn't matter now," Gunn said. "If I tell you that we can trust him to come up with a good plan, is that enough? Because we gotta get in there after George."

 

"Fine. Whatever. Get us in there," Other Gunn said, pointing a finger at Wesley. "But I warn you right now, you make up the game, you take the blame."

 

"Precisely what is that supposed to mean?" Wesley said.

 

"It means George better be okay when you're through." Cordelia was surprised to realize it was their Gunn who had answered.

 

This is all wrong, she thought. We're still angry and upset and scared, and we still don't know what to do -- I thought we had this figured out --

 

Wesley handed her a flashlight and grabbed one of the stakes Other Gunn offered him. "Where were you today when Angelus found you?" Wesley asked her.

 

"The fourth floor," Cordelia said. "It was the physics section, though God only knows what it is now."

 

"We'll find out," Gunn said grimly, gripping his hubcap axe.

 

Other Gunn threw him a look as he took up his own axe. "How come you got a bow on yours?"

 

"Shut up."

 

***

 

Fortunately, it appeared that the library's basic inner structure was much the same. It still had stairs, and floors, and books -- but the fact that they were all covered in a faintly smelly, slick ooze cut down on Cordelia's enthusiasm.

 

They made their way up the stairs gingerly -- the ooze was slippery -- and in total silence. Cordelia held the flashlight in her good hand so tightly it hurt. Wesley did not ask me what I think, but I think this is a bad idea, she decided. Angelus is not going to like being interrupted --

 

For one moment, she felt her wounded arm throb -- not along the scar, but along the band of skin where the tourniquet had been.

 

And then she heard it. A voice speaking words in no language she had ever heard -- but she still knew the voice.

 

Cordelia turned and mouthed, Angelus.

 

The others all nodded. Other Gunn breathed out once, a short huff; he was ready. But Cordelia could see her own hesitancy reflected in Wesley and Gunn's eyes.

 

The words of the spell continued to ring out, and Gunn nudged Wesley's arm. Wesley shook his head; apparently he didn't know the language either. But it didn't really matter, Cordelia realized. They knew what Angelus was about to do. And they had to stop him.

 

Other Gunn, tired of even this brief pause, went to the door. When nobody said or did anything to stop him, he pushed it open and slowly walked through. The others followed.

 

Cordelia quickly clicked off the flashlight, leaving them in darkness -- but that was better than giving Angelus extra warning.

 

What had been the physics reading room was now filled with romance novels and yet more of the ooze, thicker here than it had been anywhere else. A faint glow shone from the stacks; little slits of light flickered unevenly through the books and on the ceiling.

 

Angelus was still chanting, so apparently he hadn't heard them. Faintly -- almost beyond Cordelia's hearing -- another voice groaned in pain.

 

Both Gunns tensed. That had to be George, Cordelia thought.

 

Wesley motioned for them to split up and come at Angelus from different directions. Other Gunn scowled, but he moved to Wesley's side. Gunn went with Cordelia as they tiptoed toward Angelus.

 

Toward Angelus, Cordelia thought, aware that her mood was shifting from "troubled" to "panicked." This is a bad direction. The wrong direction. I don't want to do this, I just got away from him, what will he do this time?

 

They got to the last row of shelves. The chanting stopped suddenly. Cordelia's blood turned to ice -- but Angelus didn't yell at them or come springing out in attack. Must just be a pause in the ritual, she thought, trying to control her breathing lest he hear it. That's it, just a pause.

 

George cried out. Wesley signaled for them to move, but the Gunns didn't see it -- they just jumped. Cordelia gasped in a breath, as though diving underwater, and jumped too --

 

-- to see Angelus standing at the other end of the corridor, clutching Other Gunn's throat in his hand. Candles lined the floor of the passageway between the books; in the middle was a table. And on the table a figure who could only be George was strapped down, bleeding and dazed.

 

A series of ugly knives lay on the tabletop, near George's face, where he had no choice but to look at them.

 

"You again," Angelus said to Other Gunn, his voice almost bored. He lazily tossed away that version of the axe. Other Gunn clawed at Angelus' coat, but ineffectually; he couldn't even seem to get the breath to scream.

 

"Let go of him," Wesley said, appearing from the darkness.

 

"Oh, God, thank God, help me, help me," George whispered.

 

Even in the faint light of the candles, Cordelia could see Angelus' face shift from vampire to human. He actually smiled -- not a cruel smile, but something that was genuine, almost shy. "Wesley," he said. "You're here too."

 

"And we're going to stop you," Gunn said, taking his first running steps toward -- Angelus or George, Cordelia wasn't sure --

 

Angelus threw Other Gunn, with force; his body flew through the air, hitting Gunn hard. They fell to the floor in a tangle at Cordelia's feet.

 

George chanted helplessly, almost mindlessly, "Help me, help me, help me, please, man, help me --"

 

Wesley took advantage of the moment to lash out with his stake -- but Angelus, moving more quickly than Cordelia could see, turned back and grabbed Wesley's wrist in his hand. In a pain-hoarsened voice, Wesley croaked, "You won't do this. We're going to stop you."

 

"You don't understand," Angelus said. "And I can't let you stop me."

 

He shoved Wesley savagely backwards; he fell into the darkness, out of Cordelia's sight.

 

Both Gunns seemed stunned; they were trying, ineffectually, to pick themselves up. Okay, Cordelia thought, it's up to me. She grabbed the axe Gunn had dropped and stepped forward. "Back off, you -- big -- creep," she said.

 

"You're okay," Angelus said. He sounded glad, Cordelia thought, genuinely relieved that she was all right after their encounter that morning. In his eyes there was a kind of naked caring, even love, that she'd almost never seen from Angel himself -- oh, God, she thought, it's like I can see his soul.

 

But then his expression iced over again, into something equally familiar and far more horrifying. "You're in my way," he said. "Don't make me move you."

 

Cordelia froze for an instant, then swung the axe at him with all her strength.

 

Angelus ducked it, grabbed the axe himself and pushed it against her, knocking her back. She cried out in pain as she involuntarily took part of the fall on her wounded arm; in the faint candelight, she could see Angelus wince.

 

"I can't let you stop me," he repeated, and Cordelia realized that the only thing scarier than a crazy, ensouled Angelus was a crazy, ensouled Angelus with an axe.

 

George's voice was thick with tears now. "Oh, God, oh, God, please, please, help me, please --"

 

The two Gunns were getting to their feet, and Angelus spun, slashing the axe at them. Cordelia screamed -- but Angelus had used the broad side of the axe. Instead of bisecting them, he knocked them both down once more. Almost before she realized that, she felt the hard slam of metal against her back; her face hit the floor so hard she tasted blood.

 

She looked up in time to see Angelus grabbing Wesley -- who had apparently jumped back into the fray -- and slamming him hard into the bookshelves. The shelves shuddered but didn't fall; Wesley did both, slumping to the ground.

 

The shelves kept shaking. Then began shaking harder. "Quake," Cordelia whispered, then shouted, "QUAKE!"

 

Suddenly, the confined space was flooded with bold, blazing light. The candles had flared up and changed into torches, and the only reason the whole place didn't go up in smoke was that the shelves had suddenly become stone walls. The table George was strapped to looked a lot like an altar now. Cordelia's legs suddenly felt cold -- and when she looked down, she was wearing a Sunnydale High cheerleader's uniform.

 

Vines like the ones she'd seen outside were slithering their way in now, growing so quickly they writhed across the floor like snakes. Cordelia cried out and pulled herself free as the vines tried to wind around her ankles; Gunn, not fast enough, was quickly bound to the floor. Other Gunn jumped up, unsteady on the still-trembling ground. "What the hell --"

 

The wall was already starting to crumble. Angelus worked a loose stone free without difficulty and threw it, hard, into Other Gunn's gut. He fell again, toppling over near Cordelia. "Not much time left," Angelus said.

 

"Help me, help me, help, help, help --" George gasped.

 

"Angel!" Wesley yelled. He was pinned to the stone wall by the vines, as neatly as though he'd been tied there. "Damn you --"

 

For one moment Angelus froze. "Angel," he said softly. Then he shook his head. "No time left at all."

 

Angelus grabbed one of the knives and plunged it into George. For one long moment, there was no sound but George's terrible last scream.

 

"No," Gunn said, struggling so hard beneath the vines he was bleeding. "No!"

 

"I'm sorry," Angelus said, looking down into George's face, which was frozen in a rictus of terror and pain. Then, quickly and deliberately, he sawed through George's abdomen, cutting deeply, apparently unhampered by the shuddering earth. Cordelia could see the blood flowing down the table-altar in sheets, could taste her own blood from her cut tongue in her mouth, and thought for one moment she was going to pass out.

 

He has his soul, he has his soul, he has his soul --

 

Angelus reached into George's convulsing body. For a second, his hand disappeared entirely, making a sickening, sloshing noise as he delved into the ruined flesh. Suddenly, he pulled out a dark, glistening mass that had to be George's liver. Nausea washed over Cordelia, and she dropped to her knees; the thorns cut her legs, but the pain seemed to be coming from a great distance.

 

Angelus lifted the liver up, as if examining it. George's body went taut beneath its chains, then went limp again, then slumped into unconsciousness, if not death.

 

Other Gunn, holding his ribs in pain, got to his feet and saw what was left of George. His face creased in pain, and Cordelia saw him mouth the word, No.

 

He's dead, Cordelia thought. Oh, God, we didn't stop him, we can't get the liver, that's it --

 

The quake was stronger than ever now, and the ceiling was shot through with a dull orange glow that looked as though it were melting.

 

This is it, Cordelia thought wildly. The thing she'd fought against and feared and avoided time after time was finally coming to pass.

 

This is what the end of the world looks like.

 

Angelus reached into his pocket with his clean hand -- the other was red with George's blood -- and threw some powder and herbs at one of the torches. Then he spoke one word -- something Cordelia didn't know. But Wesley did; he stopped flailing uselessly against the vines and stared, shock-still.

 

The flame from the torch changed.

 

Instead of the usual orangey-yellow, the torch's light began shining a bright, steady, blue-white.

 

Blue-white -- Veldar's flame, the spell we needed, Cordelia thought.

 

Angelus dropped the liver into the flame. The blue-white fire leapt high -- almost to the ceiling -- and consumed it instantly.

 

The quake stopped. The ceiling quit melting. The vines started to wilt, then disintegrated into so much ash. The stone walls changed back to bookshelves -- and the books were all physics journals. The altar with George's dead body became a table once more; it was a wooden picnic table now, but still closer to what it had been. Cordelia saw her sweater shift from Razorback yellow to Trek-geek gray, and her skirt unfurled, went dark, and molded itself back into a pair of sweatpants. She felt a tingling up her arm, where Angelus had cut her, and then the pain vanished; Cordelia suddenly knew that if she pushed up the arm of her sweatshirt, she would see smooth, uninjured skin.

 

Other Gunn's body shimmered with a strange light, went transparent, and then vanished as though he had never been.

 

George still lay dead on the table. That did not change.

 

Angelus looked around, pressed his lips into a tight line, then nodded. "That'll do for now," he said.

 

Then he walked off into the darkness. Cordelia didn't have the strength to even yell for him to stop, much less do anything to make it happen. To judge from the shocked expressions on Wesley and Gunn's faces, neither did they.

 

She heard the door swing, heard Angelus' heavy footsteps as he went down the stairs.

 

I don't believe it, she thought.

 

Angelus just saved the world.

 

 

 

*******************Chapter 8*******************

 

 

 

"I'm getting it," Fred said.

 

"I'm not," Angel said, frowning at the dance floor. "How is Lorne picking this up so quickly?"

 

In the middle of the line dancers, Lorne was shimmying his way through a flamboyant version of the Achy Breaky to laughter and applause. Angel shook his head. "How do people do that? Just get out there and -- move around like nobody's even watching?"

 

Fred looked up from her napkins. "You're thinking about dancing?"

 

"It's the least unpleasant thing I can think about right now," Angel said. "Which says a lot about the day."

 

"Do you not know how to dance?" Fred asked. She smiled shyly. "Because I could teach you --"

 

"No!" Angel said hurriedly. "I mean -- I know how to dance, Fred. I used to do it all the time, back when dances made sense."

 

"Made sense?"

 

"You had partners. Steps. Patterns. It was all laid out for you in advance, and the rest was just a matter of style," Angel explained. He smiled for a moment, remembering the grand balls of Vienna, then frowned again at the chaos before him. "Back in the 18th and 19th centuries, we had real dances. Waltzes. Reels. Mazurkas. Now, the mazurka, that was a dance. These days people just get on the dance floor and -- flail."

 

"Line dancing has steps," Fred pointed out. "It has patterns. Lorne's figured it all out already."

 

Lorne chose this moment to toss an extra spin into the dance; the other dancers clapped their approval, never missing a step in their movements. Fred grinned up at Angel. "See?"

 

"I couldn't do that," Angel said. "I couldn't have everyone looking at me like that."

 

"Didn't they look at you back when you did the marimba?"

 

"Mazurka," Angel corrected her, automatically. "And yeah, I guess they did. But it didn't matter then. I never cared what people thought about me."

 

"Does it matter what people think?" Fred said.

 

Angel flashed back to the expressions on his friends' faces as, one by one, they had cast him out of Cordelia's apartment and their lives. "Yes, it does."

 

Apparently Fred had followed his line of thought; she ducked her head in embarrassment for a moment. "I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't mean to make you feel bad."

 

"Fred, no," Angel said, gently touching her shoulder. "You couldn't. It helps a lot, having you here."

 

She went pink at that and smiled. Angel realized he was on very dangerous ground -- but in an instant, Fred had snapped out of whatever reverie he had inspired. "Anyway, I wasn't actually talking about dancing, before," she said.

 

Fred began spreading her napkins out on the table; with one wave of her hand, she indicated that Angel should pick up his margarita and get it out of the way of the higher math. He looked down at the equations -- as incomprehensible as ever, and even blurrier, thanks to the effect of damp napkins on ink. But Fred seemed enthusiastic about the results.

 

"This," she announced, "is a map of Los Angeles."

 

Angel saw how happy she was with the analogy -- custom-made for the physics-illiterate -- and decided to play along. "So where's the Hollywood Bowl?"

 

"We have more important landmarks on this map," she said, so proud of herself that Angel could no longer resist a smile. "In mathematical terms, I've laid out what I think is the rough structure of this part of the splinter universe. So far, it suggests as few as two but no more than five active portals in the area --"

 

"How can you know that?" Angel said, peering at the squiggles on the table as though they would suddenly turn into arrows.

 

"In layman's terms," Fred said, "portals amplify this universe's inherent instability. If there weren't at least two active portals, we wouldn't have had this many reality quakes. But more than five --" her voice trailed off. When she spoke again, she was grave. "More than five, and there will be nothing approaching reality as we recognize it. No constants of gravity or light or physical composition. We might have a few pockets of comprehensible reality, but the rest will be pure chaos."

 

"Don't you mean, would be?" Angel said, with little hope.

 

"I mean, will be. This universe is going to get more and more unstable. By the time it's ready to self-destruct, it's going to be more confusing than I could describe to you. Except mathematically, I mean."

 

"I thought the plan was for us to be long gone by then."

 

"Well, now, see, that's sort of the interesting part," Fred said.

 

While in China, Angel had become familiar with one of the local curses. It went, May you live in interesting times. He leaned forward. "Interesting -- how?"

 

"It was easy for us to get here," Fred said. "We were moving from a place that was, for lack of a better term, more real to a place that was less real. That's like swimming with the current. But now we're trying to move from a place that's less real to a place that's more real. That's harder. Not as hard as moving from one real universe to another -- but harder than it was for us to get here. Still with me?"

 

"More or less."

 

Fred continued, "This universe is going to have to be very weak before we can be free of its influence and move back home."

 

"We have to let this universe get weak. You mean -- we have to wait for the world to end?"

 

"Right!" Fred beamed, happy to be understood. Then she paused, considering. "I suppose when you put it that way, it doesn't sound as encouraging."

 

"I can handle it," Angel said, with significantly more confidence than he felt. "Just tell me how that's going to work."

 

"Well, first the universe starts falling apart," Fred said blithely. "And then -- oh, no --"

 

The napkins fluttered as the table began to shake. People started to scream and shout. The lights flickered. At the bar, glasses and bottles began clinked and cracked together; the Miller Genuine Draft sign fell to the floor with a crash.

 

"We got a shakeup!" the bartender yelled. "Hang on to your hats!"

 

Angel could see Lorne doing just that as he ducked off the dance floor; Fred yelped and dived under the table. Angel moved to join her, shouting, "This isn't the end of the world -- is it?"

 

She shook her head, her hair flopping about wildly. "I don't know!" Fred's glasses flew off her face as she spoke, but she didn't even seem to notice. "This is a portal, right? So we can get through if we have to!"

 

"We can't!" Angel shouted over the din. "Cordelia and Wesley and Gunn -- we can't just leave them!"

 

"If this is it, we have to go!" Fred cried out.

 

In one horrible, wrenching flash, Angel realized she was right.

 

If Cordelia, Wesley and Gunn weren't there when the time came to break through and go home, then he couldn't fight it, couldn't change it. This was the one thing he couldn't control, no matter what.

 

Unless --

 

Wesley's words about the ritual to stabilize this universe flickered through his mind, as did an image of what would be necessary. The image was nauseating, terrifying, and not unfamiliar. He could postpone the end of this world if he had to, if that was what it took. He could save them all, make sure they all got home.

 

At what cost?

 

The ground lurched, and Angel could hear metal twisting. Quickly, he put a protective arm around Fred. The screaming around them raised in pitch as the ceiling took on a strange, orange-ish glow. Beneath Angel, the floor was suddenly soft; he looked down and saw the wood floor turning to dirt, then saw grass sprout up from it, somehow emerging from the earth already sickly and yellow. Tables tipped over, but when they hit the ground, they changed into stones. No, Angel realized -- into tombstones.

 

The Longhorn was becoming a graveyard.

 

Lamps became trees, old and gnarled and forbidding. Some of the chairs melted, solidified and bloomed into funereal arrangements in crimson and white. And deep welts in the earth formed, deepened and became empty graves.

 

As unnerving as all this was, Angel had spent a fair amount of time in cemeteries and was handling the transformation well -- better, it seemed, than the screaming patrons of the bar, whose ability to cope with changes apparently did not extend this far. Fred hadn't begun saying the words that would open the portal yet, so maybe this wasn't the end of the world after all.

 

Then the quake intensified, and gravity went insane.

 

Fred screamed and clutched at Angel as she was pulled upwards out of his arms; he grabbed at her hands with all his strength, but the force tugging at her was too strong. She was ripped away from him, and Angel watched helplessly as she flew -- fell? -- to the ceiling along with another dozen people. Though the ceiling still glowed an unearthly, molten orange, Fred didn't appear to be burning or in pain -- just terrified. Others were towed toward the walls; he saw Lorne go skidding into what had been the bar and was now a marble sarcophagus. Angel was one of the few still able to treat the floor as the floor.

 

"Fred!" She looked down at him, her face framed by the eerie, undulating orange glow of the ceiling. Fred was clearly panicked but able to hear him; she remained focused on him as though their lives depended on it -- and perhaps they did. "Will you know if it's the end?" he shouted. When she nodded, he said, "Then do what you have to do."

 

But even as Fred opened her mouth to begin chanting, the quake stilled -- as suddenly as it had begun. Gravity snapped back to normal. Everyone pinned to the ceiling fell; Angel dived for Fred, but she tumbled into one of the open graves. Then the grass turned back into a floor -- an unbroken floor --

 

With Fred entombed inside.

 

"Fred?" Angel yelled, pounding on the floor even as the wreaths turned back into tables. "Fred!"

 

No response. Angel began pounding harder and harder. Oh, no, no, no, he thought. Not Fred, please no. Please don't let her be --

 

Angel slammed his fists into the floor, putting his strength into it; the floorboards finally gave way. "Fred, can you hear me? Are you in there? Fred!"

 

He pulled at the wood and metal, desperately digging through the debris, seeking any evidence that Fred was still inside, still alive. She trusted me, he thought. She came with me despite everything, and now she's --

 

"Angel!" a voice gasped.

 

Angel peered down into the floor's wreckage; there, beneath still more boards, entwined in wiring, was a very frightened Fred. He breathed in and out, a reflex of relief. "I've got you," he promised. "Hold on."

 

He kept ripping and tearing at the boards until he was able to get an arm around Fred's thin shoulders and pull her free. She was trembling as he brought her up from the twisted mess that had enclosed her, and her hands gripped him tightly. Once she was finally free, they sank back against one of the tipped-over tables, exhausted. "Are you all right?" he said, hugging her close.

 

Fred's arms wound around his waist as she leaned against him. "I am now."

 

She was warm and real as she lay in his arms, her heart beating so hard he could feel it through her whole body. Angel breathed in deeply, trying to calm himself; he took in the scent of her, something delicate and intangible. And it felt so good to be near someone who trusted him, who cared for him --  to be near someone alive --

 

Fred looked up at him, her face alight with confusion and yearning and hope. And Angel felt a rush of protectiveness and warmth that he'd only known one other time in all his 250 years.

 

With Buffy, the rush had almost instantly become a bonfire -- something that blazed so hot and strong that it dominated his life from that moment to this, something that blinded him with its light.

 

He couldn't let himself be blinded again.

 

"We have to talk," Angel said, taking Fred's arms from around his waist and folding her hands in his. "About you and me."

 

"Oh -- okay," she breathed. "Is this, you know, the kind of talk where -- do you need a fish?"

 

Completely nonplussed, Angel stared down at her for a moment. "A fish?"

 

"You know, the ritual for courtship," Fred said, casting her eyes down at the last word. "Or is that just Pylea?"

 

"Just Pylea. Don't -- don't start giving men fish, okay? They're not gonna get it."

 

"That sounded too weird to be from Earth," Fred said. "Then again, so do personal ads, but those are real on Earth, right?"

 

"Yes, they are -- but, please, I need you to listen to me for a minute." Angel collected himself, then plowed ahead. "Fred, I can't ever be in a relationship -- I mean, a romantic relationship -- with anyone."

 

Some of the light in her eyes dimmed. Most people, in her position, would have began denying or at least underplaying their feelings immediately; Fred wilted, without shame or artifice, and it pierced Angel's heart to see it. "You -- you can't -- oh. But -- you said something about Buffy --"

 

"Buffy's the one who had to learn this with me. I already knew I could never marry her or give her children. But I found out that I'm cursed -- I mean, literally, I'll tell you about the gypsies sometime -- and that I can't even make love to a woman without losing my soul."

 

Fred looked extremely disappointed now. "But -- you said something about Darla --"

 

Angel shook his head. "I can have sex, if it's just bodies. If it doesn't matter. But I can't ever be with someone that I truly love. And I don't think you should settle for anything less than that, from me or from anyone."

 

For a moment, Fred glanced away; to Angel's surprise, when she looked back, she was smiling hesitantly. "It doesn't -- why would it have to be about sex?" she whispered. "I mean, if you cared about somebody, you'd still want to be with that person. Even if you couldn't -- you know -- you wouldn't just walk away. Not if you really cared."

 

Angel couldn't meet her eyes right away. "Oh, Fred. Buffy and I -- we tried that. It didn't work. I know sex isn't everything, but it matters. And the fact that I'm a vampire means I'm always a danger in other ways, too. You're the one person in my life -- the only person -- that I haven't hurt somehow. I want to keep it that way." He looked down into her open, trusting face, her soft eyes. "I'm sorry. I really am. I think you're beautiful, and smart, and brave, and a lot of other wonderful things. If the situation were different -- I'd be very lucky."

 

She sat there for a minute, taking that in. Then she said, "That must be so hard for you. To be so alone."

 

"I have my memories," Angel said.

 

"Are they enough?"

 

"They have to be."

 

Angel thought of Buffy, stepping close to kiss him for the first time in a bedroom filled with stuffed animals and schoolbooks. She didn't know anything. He thought he knew everything. Neither of them could ever have guessed what lay ahead. He'd considered that first kiss a thousand times, usually in regret or sadness. Now, though, the memory changed; for the first time, Angel was grateful for all the things they hadn't known at that moment. He was glad that they'd had one instant -- just one -- filled with nothing except anticipation and hope.

 

That was something he could never have again, and something Fred could only have with someone else.

 

She slipped her fingers from his; he let her go and sat back. Fred ran her hands over her hair, collecting herself in every way. "I -- I'm just gonna -- freshen up," she said hurriedly.

 

"The bathrooms were over there," Lorne said, sauntering up and looking none the worse for wear, though his cowboy hat was somewhat askew. "No idea where they might be now. But that's probably an okay place to start. You okay, Miss Winifred?"

 

"Fred," she corrected him with a frown. "I'm okay. Thanks."

 

As he got to his feet, Angel watched Fred step carefully through all the debris on the floor as she made her way to the back. She stopped only to pluck her glasses out of the wreckage; she slid them back on carefully, then straightened herself up and went on.

 

Lorne said, "Well, looks like I broke up quite the little tryst over here." After a couple of moments, he continued, "I said that mostly to hear your outraged denial, which I can't help but notice isn't forthcoming."

 

"Nothing's happening," Angel said quietly. "Fred and I -- it's not even a possibility. And Cordelia told me I should talk to her about it right away."

 

"Whoa, whoa, whoa," Lorne said. "You had the friends talk? You just friended Fred?"

 

"It's not that I don't --" Angel hesitated, then said, "I can't get involved with her. You know that. And it was best to tell Fred that up front, so she can forget about me and move on."

 

Lorne shook his head and laughed. "Let me get this straight: Fred's got the hots for you, you might just have the hots for Fred, and you think a little sit-down chat's going to end all that?"

 

"Cordelia said --"

 

"This was Cordelia's idea?" Lorne said. "Following female advice is usually a good idea in affairs de coeur, but not today. Cordelia's greatest virtue is she's completely straightforward. She says it, she thinks it, she does it. It's refreshing. But her greatest problem is that she keeps on believing the rest of the world should work the same way. It doesn't. You sure don't. And love? Never."

 

"But now that Fred knows --"

 

"What does Fred know? That you're a big, handsome, swarthilicious fella who keeps saving her life at every opportunity, who's as lonely as lonely can be, and would just love to love her if only you had the chance. Oh, yeah, your problems are over."

 

Angel dropped his head into his hand. Lorne patted him on the shoulder. "C'mon. Let's see if any bottles of the good stuff survived the quake."

 

***

 

Darla was running again. But this time she was fleeing up, not down.

 

Behind her, a twisting storm of wind and dust howled in the confines of the Hyperion's hallways. The black, roiling mass had writhed into existence just as the most recent, and most violent, shakeup had begun. Now, only minutes old, the tornado had already consumed most of the hotel's lower floors. Darla was certain that if it caught up with her, she would be torn limb from limb in seconds.

 

There was nowhere to go except up.

 

Her feet pounded on the stairs as she climbed desperately; she was steadily growing dizzier as she rounded corner after corner at speed. Up was not good. There was nowhere to go after the top floor, nowhere to hide from the bellowing roar at her back. But there were no choices left to her; she was being driven by a force she could neither evade nor fight, and Darla was experiencing her least favorite sensation. Fear.

 

She had reached the third floor now. Halfway to the top. Maybe if she could get out on to the roof --

 

Suddenly, her foot caught in the frayed edge of the carpet. Darla fell.

 

She scrambled to get up and succeeded only in turning around in time to see the full force of the storm bearing down on her. The air was solid with thick black ash; the wind lashed her like a hundred whips; her skin burned and her head was filled with a buzzing that made her brain hurt --

 

And then it was gone.

 

Ash and dust rained down on the carpet around Darla. The hotel was silent. As quickly as it had risen, the storm had dissipated.

 

She clambered to her feet. The faint tremors shaking the building told her that the quake was still going on, somewhere, but its worst effects appeared to be over. Darla shut her eyes.

 

She'd survived.

 

Darla opened her eyes, and smiled triumphantly. She'd survived. She always survived. It was what she was good at.

 

She straightened up and noted with distaste that she was covered in thick black ash. Her attempts to wipe it off using her hands only served to rub it more deeply into her clothes and skin. 

 

Time to get clean.

 

She walked along the third floor hallway toward the bedrooms. Her narrow escape had left her drained, and by the time she reached the closest room, every step was an effort. Her mouth was dry, and her limbs ached. She was exhausted.

 

She reached out to open the door, and froze.

 

The hand resting on the door handle was petite and perfectly manicured. It was also wrinkled and liver-spotted. It was the hand of an old woman.

 

Terrified, Darla pushed open the door and stumbled into the bedroom. She walked past the musty, unmade bed and went straight to the bathroom. To the mirror in the bathroom.

 

She saw her reflection and gasped in horror.

 

The woman looking back at her was growing older as she watched, aging decades in the space of seconds. Darla saw her hair thin, turn gray, then white. Her complexion paled; her skin wrinkled and became translucent, like tissue paper. Her eyes dimmed, then were obscured by thick folds of skin hanging loose around them. 

 

Darla watched her beauty shrivel and vanish.

 

"This is not possible," she said out loud. "This is -- not -- possible." But her voice was little more than a croak, and in her mind she heard Angelus saying, Everything is possible now. Even the things that aren't.

 

She sank to her knees; then, when her strength deserted her entirely, she rolled on to her back and stared up at the bathroom's dingy ceiling. Her vision was fading at the edges, and her arms and legs felt heavy and cold.

 

Was this what dying felt like? Her first death had been so long ago Darla could barely recall it; the sensations of strength and overwhelming thirst she had felt on wakening as a vampire were far more memorable.

 

This was death as humans knew it, she realized. An intense desire to sleep, lethargy creeping over weighty limbs, a simple hunger for rest. This was what she had cheated her way out of four centuries earlier; this was what she had fought tooth and nail to escape ever since. She should be terrified now. Angry. Bitter.

 

Darla felt none of those emotions. She was simply tired, and grateful, at last, to rest.

 

She closed her eyes and waited for the darkness.

 

It didn't come.

 

When she opened her eyes again, she was still lying on the cold bathroom floor. Her legs were cramping, and she had to move. The hand she reached out to pull herself to her feet was unblemished and smooth. A young woman's hand.

 

Darla stood up. The floor under her feet was stable; the quake was over. And, judging by the faint glow coming from behind the curtains over the window in the next room, it was morning.

 

She left the bathroom and walked through the bedroom and back to the hallway. She felt so light she was surprised when she looked down and saw her feet were touching the carpet. She had thought she was floating.

 

Something had happened to her, and Darla wasn't yet sure what it was.

 

The sight of her ash-stained legs and arms jolted her into wakefulness. She was still filthy. Picking up her pace, she descended to the second floor, and the room she and Angelus used most often.

 

She opened the door and started to pull her dress off over her head as she entered the bedroom. It wasn't until she had shrugged it off completely that she saw she wasn't alone.

 

Angelus was sitting in the chair beside the bed. His clothes and hands were dark with dried blood. There were flecks of it all over his face. He looked as if he hadn't moved in hours. He looked as if he might never move again.

 

He lifted his head and saw Darla. She clutched her dress in front of her, feeling a sudden and absurd modesty. One of his shirts was lying on the end of the bed, so she picked it up and put it on.

 

In a dead, flat voice he said, "I made the sacrifice. Performed the ritual. I stopped it again, for a while. Soon I can stop it for good."

 

He was still looking at her, as if in entreaty. Darla didn't know what he wanted. Approval, maybe?

 

She crossed the room slowly and sat down on the edge of the bed. They were so close to each other their knees almost touched. "Angelus --"

 

"Angel," he said.

 

Darla looked at him. "What?"

 

"Angel," he repeated. "He called me Angel. There was a time -- a time when I thought I could have that name. I thought I could be something else. I believed in the possibility of redemption."

 

"Now we know better, my love," Darla said, shaking her head. She smiled. "And isn't that how we always liked it?"

 

"We know better," Angelus repeated. He closed his eyes. "They saw me -- they saw what I am -- and I can never go back --"

 

Darla held his bloodied hands in her ash-stained ones. "Hush, my sweet."

 

Angelus opened his eyes, and looked at her desolately. "There is redemption, but not for us." Matter-of-factly, he added, "I'm going to save the world."

 

"I know."

 

"I'm going to make this all stop. And then I won't have to care anymore."

 

His voice was faint, almost wistful. Darla leaned closer to him and whispered, "And when you do, everything will be better."

 

He laughed at that, so brokenly he might have been choking. "No, it won't. But that's okay. That's how it's supposed to be." He stopped, and looked at her. "Promise you won't leave."

 

"Yours to the end," Darla told him. She stood up, pulling him to his feet along with her. "Go and clean yourself up. And then sleep. You deserve it."

 

"I deserve it," Angelus repeated. Darla led him to the bathroom, stripped off his bloodied clothes, turned on the shower and pushed the soap into his hands. When she was satisfied he could continue with the mechanical acts of lathering and scrubbing unassisted, she left him and went downstairs to the hotel reception.

 

She crossed the lobby quickly, barely registering the fact that the bone-tree was gone. Darla needed a drink.

 

She kept her stash of liquor in a well-padded drawer, and most of the bottles had survived the quake intact. She lifted one at random and unscrewed the lid.

 

Behind her, a cat mewled.

 

Darla lowered the bottle without drinking and turned around slowly, afraid of what she would see.

 

The gray cat stood in the middle of the Hyperion's lobby. Its left ear was ragged, and its coat was mangy; there was no doubt it was the same animal she had last seen broken and dead, suspended inside a cage of bones.

 

Angelus' magic had changed reality. Brought it back to life.

 

The cat paid no attention to Darla; it was too busy toying with the small rodent it had caught. She held out the bottle to it. "Hello, kitty. Still thirsty?"

 

At the sound of her voice, the cat glanced up at Darla just long enough to decide she didn't present a threat. Then it pounced on the small creature pinned down between its claws.

 

Its fangs, already sharp, thickened and grew. At the same time, its face twisted, hard ridges rippling into existence above its yellow eyes. The cat bit down on its prey and began to drink.

 

Darla watched it in a mixture of horror and fascination. She had been mistaken. The cat was back -- but it wasn't alive.

 

Within seconds, the mouse's body was little more than a dry bag of fur and bones. The cat tossed it over twice, then batted the corpse to one side with its paw. Evidently unsatisfied, it began to sniff the air, trying to scent out a fresh source of blood.

 

Darla understood the hunger it felt. It was a pure and savage need, undeniable, insatiable. The cat would hunt and kill and drink and kill and drink -- it would never feel a moment's peace, never again know real rest --

 

There was a crash, and the cat fled. Darla looked down, and saw the bottle she had been holding lying at her feet. It had shattered when she had dropped it.

 

Darla looked back at the stairs which led to the Hyperion's upper floors. Angelus was in one of the bedrooms up there. Maybe he was waiting for her; more likely, he had fallen asleep already.

 

It would be hours before he woke and discovered she was gone.

 

***

 

The sun was coming up over L.A., heralding the start of a new day. Wesley hadn't yet recovered from the shock of still being alive to see it.

 

They were driving through the pre-dawn streets in stunned silence, Other Gunn's truck rolling smoothly over the non-cobbled road surface. Wesley wasn't sure why the vehicle should continue to exist when its owner had disappeared  -- literally -- into thin air, but he was grateful it did. He was grateful, too, that Gunn was driving, although judging by the way he kept nervously drumming his fingers against the steering wheel, Wesley guessed he was equally, if not more, shaken.

 

Cordelia spoke first. "Would someone like to explain what just happened back there?"

 

Neither Wesley nor Gunn responded.

 

"I mean, that other Gunn just -- he just -- " Cordelia put her hands together, then broke them apart with a flourish, "Poof, all gone! Is he -- dead?"

 

Wesley thought over the events at the library, trying to make sense of what had happened. "I think he didn't die so much as simply -- stop existing. The effect of the magic was to stabilize this universe, to force it to make sense. Since you can't have two versions of the same person in the same place at the same time, one of them simply -- disappeared."

 

"But that would mean Angelus just saved the world."

 

"He did," Wesley said.

 

"That's not your line," Cordelia said. "This is the part where you disagree with me, and -- " She trailed off. "You're not gonna disagree with me, are you?"

 

"There's no doubt about it," Wesley said. "By performing the ritual -- cleansing the sacrifice -- he checked the forces which are causing this universe to fall apart. Temporarily, at least."

 

That much was inarguable: the evidence was all around them. The truck passed a sober office building which only a few hours earlier had been a small tropical rain forest, complete with brightly feathered macaws and grazing okapi. Not everything was back to normal -- the sun, for example, was breaking with tradition and rising in the west -- but there was a sense that imminent collapse had been, if not averted, then at least postponed.

 

Cordelia took a deep breath. "So we're saying Angelus is the good guy here?"

 

Gunn stared at the road ahead. Tonelessly, he said, "If he's so damn good, how come my friend is dead?"

 

Unbidden, his own words from just days before came back to Wesley. You try not to get anybody killed, you wind up getting everybody killed. Was that the decision Angelus had made as well: a few lives in exchange for many?

 

Wesley had thought he was dealing with evil in its purest form, and he had been horrified. But it was far more horrifying to realize that the actions Angelus had taken in this universe were ones he could understand, if not condone.

 

"So -- what does this mean?"

 

Wesley turned around. "Cordelia?"

 

She shook her head. "This makes everything different, right?"

 

They had arrived back at Cordelia's apartment in Silverlake. As Gunn parked the truck at the front of the building, Wesley said, "This doesn't change anything. We still have to find a way to get home. We still have to --"

 

As he got out of the truck, he stopped. Gunn and Cordelia drew up beside him.

 

Darla was waiting for them. She stood outside Cordelia's door, protected from the morning sun by the partition that screened off the entrance from that of the neighboring apartment.

 

Cordelia rolled her eyes. "I do not believe this. It's not even eight a.m., and already this is shaping up to be a really BAD day." Picking up her pace, she began to march determinedly toward the building.

 

Gunn followed her; Wesley hesitated. "Cordelia -- wait. Remember, she's dangerous --"

 

"It's daytime, Wes," Cordelia said without looking around. "If I stand in the sunlight, what's the worst she can do? Spit at me?"

 

Something wasn't right here, Wesley thought. Angelus saving the world. Darla making daytime excursions to visit his past victims. He wished something in this mixed-up, maddening universe would just make sense --

 

"You've got some nerve coming here, lady." Cordelia was standing in the light, just a few paces beyond Darla's reach.

 

Darla blinked. She looked steadily at Cordelia, then at Gunn and Wesley. She was wincing a little, and it was clear the daylight was making her uncomfortable. "I need to talk to you."

 

"Hey, that's convenient," Cordelia said. "Because I've been wanting to talk to you too. See, it seems to me this whole mess is your fault. We were getting along just fine until you turned up and starting screwing with Angel's head. And you didn't just do it in our universe -- you did it here too. You screwed him up, and then you just screwed him, and now I'm crazy and Wesley's dead and God only knows where Gunn's gone. And it's all. Your. Fault."

 

Cordelia stepped forward and jabbed her finger into Darla's chest to emphasize each syllable of the last three words. Wesley wasn't sure, but he thought Darla actually recoiled. Now he could study her up close, he saw she was -- different. Her hair was a mess, and her clothes were mismatched, as if she'd thrown them on in a hurry. But there was something else, something wrong and yet recognizable -- "Cordelia," Wesley began.

 

"You have to help me," Darla said.

 

Cordelia moved another step closer, so that she was now half in and half out of the shade of the partition. "Oh, wait, I think I remember this. How did it go, again? Oh yeah -- 'You have to HELP me, Angel. I'm DYING, and gee golly gosh, because I'm human now I can exploit your misguided sense of responsibility.'" She folded her arms across her chest, her stance combative. "Well, tough luck. Because I'm not Angel, and you're not human any more. And I've wanted to do THIS for a very long time."

 

With one quick motion, Cordelia reached out and pushed over the partition, allowing the morning sun to flood the porch. Wesley half-turned away, expecting the familiar flare of flame and heat that accompanied a vampire's exposure to the sun's light.

 

Darla didn't move for a moment. Then she opened the bag she was carrying and brought out a pair of sunglasses. She unfolded them and put them on.

 

"Okay," Cordelia said. "I guess that last reality quake gave you vampires some major SPF protection. Someone gimme a stake."

 

"Cordelia, wait," Wesley said. He reached forward and grabbed Darla's wrist. She looked back at him, almost uninterested. The truth was inescapable now. "She's not a vampire. She's -- she's alive."

 

"Oh, yes, I'm alive," Darla said bitterly. "And, God, I wish I weren't."

 

 

 

****************Chapter 9****************

 

Darla sat perched on the edge of her chair, flipping a cigarette over and over between her fingers. "Anybody got a light?"

 

"We don't smoke," Cordelia said coolly.

 

"Figures," Darla said. "I need a drink."

 

Wesley's overwhelming inclination to hostility inexplicably surrendered -- briefly -- to the influence of untold generations of good English breeding. "Tea or coffee?"

 

Darla glared at him. "I said I need a drink." She glanced down at her hands and looked momentarily surprised to discover she had shredded the tip of the unlit cigarette with her nails. "Funny, you can smoke thousands of these things and never get addicted when you're a vampire."

 

"Which you, pardon me for mentioning it, patently are not," Wesley said. "Why are you here?"

 

"Because I want to die," Darla said.

 

"Sounds good to me," Cordelia said brightly, standing up. "There's a carving knife in the kitchen. I'll just get it and then we can --"

 

"Cordelia!"

 

She sat down again. "Okay, okay. Joke. Mostly."

 

The cigarette slipped out from Darla's fingers and fell on to the floor. She didn't pick it up. She looked exhausted, Wesley thought, as if she hadn't slept well for weeks, or perhaps ever. Rattails of dull blonde hair hung limply around her face, and her skin was sallow. She looked ill.

 

"You're dying already," he said.

 

If Darla was surprised he knew, she didn't show it. "They brought me back wrong. Or maybe right. I think -- maybe -- this is how it was supposed to be..."

 

Gunn looked at Wesley as the realization dawned on him too. "She's got syphilis. Just like the Darla in our universe did."

 

Wesley nodded slowly, but his mind was racing. When they had arrived to find Darla in Angelus' company, they had assumed she was a vampire. Why? Because, he thought, in our universe -- the real universe -- "Were you made human by one of the reality quakes? Or did Drusilla never turn you into a vampire at all?"

 

"Dru? Turn me?" Darla seemed genuinely surprised, even amused, by the idea. "She'd have liked that. She always did have a warped grasp of family. At first, I would have welcomed it, even from her. But really I wanted Angelus to do it -- I begged, and I begged, and I begged --"

 

Assumptions, Wesley thought. Everything we've assumed so far has been proved wrong. We assumed Darla was a vampire, but she isn't. We assumed the Angel from this universe lost his soul when he slept with Darla, but he didn't. We assumed he'd murdered Buffy, but he hadn't. We assumed Angelus is trying to destroy the world -- but he's not.

 

We thought this universe didn't make sense. Maybe it does. Maybe we've simply been blinded by our fears.

 

"We need to start at the beginning," he said.

 

Cordelia looked at him. "Wesley, world ending, remember? That means we don't have a lot of time for in-depth analysis."

 

Still looking at Darla, Wesley shook his head. "That means we have to understand precisely what we're dealing with." He walked forward until he was standing directly in front of her. "You said they brought you back. Do you mean Wolfram & Hart?"

 

She nodded. So that was one fact confirmed. Up to that point, at least, this universe had followed the same course as their own.

 

"Tell us what happened after that."

 

"They gave me clothes. Money. A place to live." Darla shrugged. "Then they tried to kill me."

 

Gunn raised an eyebrow. "Ooooh, I think I've seen this one already."

 

Darla gave a low, humorless chuckle. "I wanted to rip their throats out... I couldn't. They brought me back human, and weak, with this -- thing inside me --" She raised a hand and clawed ineffectually at her chest.

 

"The syphilis?" Cordelia asked.

 

"The soul," Darla said, her expression disgusted. "But my boy came for me. It was always that way. It didn't matter how long we were apart -- he always came back to me in the end. And I came back to him." She smiled, and for an instant her face took on an aspect which was almost gentle.

 

Cordelia made a retching sound. "It's Love Story with fangs. Spare us."

 

"Pardon me for not seeing the romance here," Gunn said, "but I'm thinking you only went looking for Angel 'cause you wanted him to make you into a vamp again."

 

"At first," Darla said, her voice quiet.

 

"He wouldn't do it; he wouldn't turn you," Wesley surmised. "So you stayed, hoping to persuade him --"

 

Cordelia raised her hand. "Uhh, time out. Angelus was in a vamping state of mind when he tried to turn ME. Anyone want to explain that little logic twister?"

 

"He didn't, though," Wesley remembered. Slowly, he was deconstructing the facts, reassembling them in a more meaningful way. "He couldn't go through with it."

 

"When you arrived at the hotel," Darla said, "we didn't think you were real at first. Things change from one shakeup to the next. Every quake throws up shadows and ghosts."

 

Cordelia took a sharp breath. Gunn looked at her. "Cordy?"

 

"He said -- he said he wanted something like Cordelia. Those were his exact words. I guess he thought if I weren't real it would be okay to --" When Cordelia broke off, she stared at Darla. "He said he already had something like Buffy."

 

Darla smiled crookedly. "I always thought she looked a little like me. Turns out it's the other way round."

 

Gunn stood up. He circled behind Darla slowly, then came to stand beside Wesley. When he spoke, there was a clear edge of suspicion in his tone. "And now you've changed your mind. You're cool with dying, after all. What's with the 180? Because you're not convincing me."

 

"I'm not trying to convince you. I'm telling you that we have to stop Angelus, and soon, or else --" Darla began. Abruptly, she broke off and put her hand to her chest. Her breathing became fast and shallow, and it was clear she was struggling for air. "Pills --" she gasped.

 

Wesley hesitated, then started searching through the contents of her bag. A half-empty blister-pack of light blue capsules nestled at the bottom. He took it out and punched out one of them. "Someone get her some --"

 

Cordelia appeared at his elbow, holding a glass of water. With Gunn's help, she forced a small amount of it into Darla's mouth, while Wesley administered the medicine. After a few more seconds, the seizure subsided.

 

Wesley looked at the pack in his hand, but both it and the capsules it contained were unmarked. "What are these?"

 

Darla's voice was hoarse as she said, "I don't know. He gets them for me. They stop the palpitations. For a while." She shook her head. "He won't turn me, but he brings me those. He's just delaying the inevitable. He's doing the same thing to me he's doing to the world. Putting together the broken pieces, pretending he can't see the cracks."

 

"The sacrifices he's making," Wesley said. He sat down, the packet of pills still in his hand. "He's -- patching up reality. He can suppress the symptoms, but he can't cure the disease."

 

"The world is dying. Breaking up, breaking down, unraveling at the edges, rotting from the inside out. I can feel it because the same thing is happening to me." Darla's voice was soft, and Wesley heard no anger in it, only resignation. "Angelus wants to bind the cracks with magic and make it go on and on and on. But I'm tired. I hurt. And I just want everything to stop."

 

Her shoulders slumped as she spoke. For a moment Wesley saw her in a different light and, for the first time, as a different person to the Darla in the real universe. Perhaps they'd started off from the same place, but their paths had diverged in obvious -- and some less obvious -- ways. The woman he was currently talking to might have a name and face he knew, but she wasn't the same person as her counterpart in Wesley's universe.

 

And the Gunn who had vanished and the Cordelia who was blind and insane were different people, too. The distinction between what was real and what was not should have been simple to make, and yet they had somehow all failed to make it.

 

"I'm not buying it," Gunn said suddenly, his voice harsh. "Why's Angelus running around trying to make the world a saner place? Why's he picking up meds for his girlfriend? The rest of his behavior don't exactly scream Boy Scout."

 

"He wants to save the world," Darla said. "Can't imagine why. Maybe he doesn't think he's been punished enough yet."

 

"For killing us?" said Cordelia. She folded her arms across her chest. "Nice sentiment, but a little late."

 

"No," Darla said. "For not being able to save you."

 

Gunn turned to stare at her in frank disbelief. "Right. Just like he saved George."

 

"We saw him kill George. But what we didn't see, we assumed -- " Wesley broke off, and when he spoke again, his voice was hollow. "Darla is alive here, not a vampire. That means the point at which this universe's history diverged from ours is much earlier than we thought. Before Angel slept with her in our universe -- before Drusilla turned her -- before all of that had a chance to happen here, something else occurred. Something that changed Angel but didn't remove his soul."

 

Cordelia was looking at him blankly. "Like what?"

 

Darla's expression was disdainful. "You mean you haven't even found out what happened to yourselves here? Inept, aren't you?" Obviously enjoying the opportunity to act as the bearer of bad news, she pointed at Wesley while addressing Cordelia. "He's dead. And you lost your mind. And your eyes."

 

"We know," Wesley said tersely. "But -- when did it happen?" Even as he spoke the words, the answer began forming in his mind.

 

Darla put words to the images. "When Wolfram & Hart brought me back," she told him. "When they sent -- what was that thing's name -- Vocah after you both. You died in a bombing, apparently; you hung on for a couple of days, long enough to put some lovely images in Angelus' head." She turned to Cordelia. "You were already insane --"

 

"I was close," Cordelia whispered, shuddering. "It was like having other people's nightmares pumped into my skull -- except worse, because I knew it was all real. I couldn't stop seeing them, and all I wanted to do was --" She broke off suddenly. Horror mixed with growing comprehension flooded her face. "I wanted to tear my eyes out."

 

"And you did," Darla said. Her smile was too broad in her sallow face -- for the first time, Wesley understood the phrase 'death's-head grin'. "Angelus got to you just a little too late -- a minute earlier, and maybe -- well. After that, he gave up. He put you in the best loony bin he could find, and then -- then he came back for me."

 

Gunn's voice was still edged with suspicion, but less than it had been. "And he just spilled all this to you. Because he's such a sharing, in-touch-with-his-emotions kinda guy."

 

"I share his bed," Darla said, and shrugged. "Sometimes he drinks. Sometimes he dreams. Sometimes he even talks to me. All those pretty pictures in his head -- I've got them too."

 

Cordelia had been brought to the hospital by a distraught man, the doctor had said. Wesley had envisioned himself in that role, but now could see the scene as it must have transpired: Cordelia the shuddering wreck he had seen in the hospital, Angel already shutting off, shutting down, unable to forgive his own failure to protect them.

 

"So Wolfram & Hart won," Wesley said. "They pushed Angel over the edge. They drove him to despair."

 

"I think it was a big day at the office," Darla confided. "Promotions for everyone. They all went to the Home Office, wherever that is. They did such a good job on all of us." There was an edge of ice in her voice as she concluded, "I hope they all got what they deserved."

 

"Wait. Wait. Angel -- Angelus -- flipped because he lost us?" Cordelia was shaking her head slowly. "Then why did he go to such trouble to fire us back in December? Why didn't we matter to him then?"

 

"No. We did matter," Wesley said. "He told us that, in so many words. He knew we were all that stood between him and darkness. He knew what he would become without us. The only difference was, then he was seeking it out. "

 

Gunn said, "When you were both in the hospital -- after Wolfram & Hart had gotten to you -- Angel asked me to look out for you. He said you meant a lot to him. The way he said it, it sounded more like 'everything'."

 

Wesley said nothing. He was remembering the sheer, visceral shock he'd felt on seeing this universe's Cordelia. His sense of outrage had quickly become a need to lay blame, to exact retribution. Emotion had overcome reason, even though he knew the real Cordelia was unharmed and whole. What he had felt must have been nothing compared to the grief and anguish Angel had experienced.

 

Angel, Wesley thought. Not Angelus. It was always Angel.

 

Wesley thought, what were we afraid of? Angel becoming dangerous. What makes Angel dangerous? Solitude. So what did we do? We threw him out. Bloody stroke of genius, that.

 

He raised his head and saw everyone was looking at him. In a small voice, Cordelia asked, "What are we gonna do?"

 

Of course they were looking to him. He was in charge; he made the decisions. That included the hardest ones.

 

He straightened up.

 

"The first thing we have to do is go and talk to Angel," Wesley said.

 

***

 

"Folks, we had extended hours tonight 'cause of the shakeup and all -- people do like to knock 'em back after one of those," the bouncer said. "But it's almost breakfast, and it's about time you went on home."

 

"We'd love to," Lorne said, "but truth be told, we don't actually have anyplace to go. Know any nice motels in the vicinity? That don't charge more than -- oh, what have I got here -- $13.76 and 5 Pylean yuctaba?"

 

Angel sighed and started searching his own wallet; he'd have to send Fred out to the car to grab his blanket so he could make a run for it. He didn't want to leave; he wanted to lie down -- on the floor, if he had to -- shut his eyes and give in to exhaustion. He'd felt the sun come up a few hours ago, and after two straight days awake, the impulse to sleep was almost overwhelming.

 

Fred, for her part, looked as exhausted as he felt. Since their conversation, she'd avoided being as close to him as before -- she didn't seem angry or resentful, just slightly awkward. Lorne, in an unusual display of subtlety, sat between them and steered the talk to neutral topics, like margaritas, the Dixie Chicks and the impending apocalypse.

 

Just as Angel fished out a couple of twenties to add to the kitty, the bouncer sighed. "I shouldn't be doing this," he said, "but I can't just go tossing a green man out on the street. There's a spare room in back with a cot for the lady, if you want it. That still puts you boys on the floor, but -- "

 

"We'll take it," Lorne said. "You are a man of uncommon decency, not to mention credulity."

 

The bouncer didn't look as if he understood the last word, but he also didn't seem to care much. "Hell, after that last shakeup, it's not like there's anything left worth stealing. We'll be back around 2 p.m. for cleanup duty. Maybe you guys can pitch in, huh?"

 

"Our pleasure and privilege," Lorne said. "Take care, amigo."

 

As the bouncer shooed the last couple of customers out the door, Fred said, "He's being very nice."

 

"He has a good heart and a soft head," Lorne said, not unkindly. "Both of which work to our advantage."

 

Although not, apparently, to the advantage of the people who had just arrived at the door, and were trying to get in. The bouncer was shaking his head as he tried to close the door on them. "At this hour?" Angel muttered. "It's, what, eight a.m.?"

 

"Never underestimate the human capacity for alcohol," Lorne said.

 

Then Angel's sharp ears caught the voices at the door.

 

"We were looking for our friends -- one of them might appear a bit, ah, unusual --" Wesley?

 

"He's green, okay? You MUST have noticed the green guy." That had to be Cordelia.

 

Angel stood up even as the bouncer, shaking his head, let the others in. Wesley and Cordelia were in the lead, followed by Gunn and -- he blinked in surprise -- Darla?

 

"Look at what we have here," Lorne said. "I just know the story behind this is really rich, and I'm looking forward to hearing it, because the only reason you guys showed up here is to tell us that we have a way home. Right?"

 

"Sorry, but no," Wesley said. At first, he hadn't met Angel's eyes -- but now he brought his head up, looked him in the face. "We found out what happened in this universe. Why Angelus has done the things he's done."

 

Angel found it hard to look away from Darla; she was close enough now that he could catch her scent. Unquestionably human; unquestionably very sick. She was staring back at him, searching his face for something -- what, he couldn't begin to guess. "It wasn't Darla," he said, repeating only what he already knew.

 

"You remember last year, when our offices got bombed and I got the visions and stuff?" Cordelia said. "Well, okay, of course you remember that. But --"

 

"Wesley died, didn't he?" Angel said. "And then he couldn't translate the scroll to save you. But -- your eyes --"

 

"Did that myself," Cordelia said. She rocked back and forth on her heels, twisting her hands together as she spoke. "How scary a week are we having that this news comes as a relief?"

 

"Of course," Angel said. "Of course." It all made sense now -- he would have seen it before, if only he hadn't been too wrapped up in his own fears and concerns to see it. How well he remembered that long, black night when it seemed he would lose them both -- the quick, unwelcome thrill of vengeance as he'd killed Vocah, sliced off Lindsey's hand. He had been so frightened, so guilty, so desperate -- and beneath it all, twisted up by the terrible wish not to care.

 

Angel shook his head and looked again at his friends. "And that changes things?"

 

"I think perhaps it does," Wesley said. "We've interpreted so much of what Angelus is doing -- of what you did in the past -- as pure evil. And it wasn't that at all. The truth is more complex."

 

Lorne said, "Hate to interrupt this very special episode, but I was just wondering -- how is it that Angelus attempting to destroy the world isn't pure evil? Because it sure seems close enough for jazz."

 

"Turns out Angelus ain't trying to destroy the world after all," Gunn said. "He's trying to save it, though why he's picking off my gang to do it --"

 

"Of course," Angel repeated. "He has to kill them to take the livers for the sacrifice. And he chooses people who don't have families or jobs -- the people he thinks no one will miss."

 

"He's wrong about that," Gunn said.

 

"I know. He knows it, too. But he'll tell himself anything to make it easier," Angel said.

 

"Wait a second," Fred said. "Angelus is trying to save the world? He's interfering with the breakup of this reality?"

 

"That's right, little girl." Darla's voice was a rasp, and she was steadying herself on a nearby chair, gripping it with white knuckles. Angel realized she was almost ready to fall down. "Angelus is quite certain he can keep us all alive forever."

 

"Perhaps that's for the best," Wesley said. "These people can survive, instead of perishing."

 

"My people gettin' killed is for the best?" Gunn protested.

 

"What's done is done," Wesley said. "We can't take it back."

 

Angel sensed an argument brewing and was quietly glad, for once, to be out of it. He stepped forward and took Darla's arm in his hand; she flinched, but didn't pull away. Gently, Angel guided her to sit in the chair. He pretended not to see Cordelia's look of displeasure.

 

"That last reality quake -- that should have been it. That should have been the end," Fred said. "But Angelus stabilized it. He turned it back. Oh, this is bad. This is very, very bad."

 

"We need the world to end in order to get home," Angel explained. "We need reality to break down completely."

 

"Let me get this straight," Gunn said. "The apocalypse is coming, Angelus is trying to stop it, and we want it to happen? Anybody want to take a shot at what's wrong with that picture?"

 

"Can he stop it?" Cordelia asked. "I mean, I thought this universe was on the skids pretty much no matter what. He's only buying time, right?"

 

"I don't think so," Darla said. "Angelus doesn't think so either. He thinks he can stop this forever."

 

"Oh, no," Fred said. "Oh -- I need napkins."

 

The others stared at Fred a bit, but Lorne hurried over to get her some more paper for calculations.

 

"I can't help but notice this is a bar," Darla said. She smiled at Angel. "How about a drink for old times' sake? Or don't you and I have any old times?"

 

"We do," Angel said. "But I won't get you a drink. I'll get you a glass of water. You look like you could use it."

 

Darla laughed, a dry, cracked sound. "I'm not exactly worried about my liver, you know."

 

Angel went behind the bar, took out a plastic cup and found the nozzle for water. To his surprise, Wesley followed him. As Angel filled up the cup, he said quietly, "Thanks."

 

Wesley genuinely seemed surprised. "For what?"

 

"For giving me another chance."

 

"You gave me one, once," Wesley said. "When we met, I treated you like an animal to be caged. When we met again in Los Angeles, I threatened you. But you gave me assistance and work and friendship when very few others would have. I'd never have found another life that would have suited me so well as what we're doing now, and I'd never have found that, but for you. You gave me the chance."

 

Angel stared at Wesley for a moment; he hadn't thought of the early days of their friendship in so long, it was surprising to remember. "You deserved it."

 

"And so do you. Come on, let's get your demonic sire her water."

 

Fred was huddled in a corner now, writing out more scribbles on her napkins. Lorne and Gunn sat near her, staring down at the markings in futile hopes of understanding. As Angel approached Darla, Wesley took Cordelia's hand and drew her aside, toward Fred. Cordelia opened her mouth to protest -- then, to Angel's surprise, shut it again and walked away.

 

Angel sat down opposite Darla and handed her the cup. "This will make you feel better."

 

"I doubt it. The only thing that will make me feel better is death," she said, but she accepted the water.

 

He watched her drink, noting the tiny grimace of pain she tried to hide with every swallow. Her face was bare of makeup, and her hair simply hung around it, uncombed. In two hundred and fifty years, Angel could count the occasions he had seen her like this on the fingers of one hand.

 

"You were so afraid to die, when you first came back. You pleaded with me to make you a vampire."

 

"I pleaded with you -- him -- to make me a vampire here, too," she said. "And you know how well I can beg, don't you, darling boy? I used to ask sosweetly, and you did whatever I wanted." It was true, he knew -- and once, she would have used those memories to mock him. Now she only sounded tired and sad. "But this one thing, you wouldn't give me. You thought it was better to die a human than go on as a vampire. And finally, I believe you."

 

"Where I come from, you were denied that," Angel said. "It was Drusilla. She turned you right in front of me."

 

"Oh, my love." Her hand against his cheek was bony, covered in rough, cracked skin. "And that other Darla -- she's a vampire again?"

 

He nodded.

 

She smiled. "And does she hound you without mercy?"

 

"Not lately. But she will again."

 

"Don't let her," Darla said.

 

"What?"

 

"I want to die," Darla said, more firmly than she'd said anything else. "I want to die a true death. As a human. The way it should have been. I don't want vampirism or magic spells or alternate universes to keep dragging my life out, so very far past the point when it ought to have ended. I used to think you could never have enough existence, but you can. I'm old enough. I've seen enough. I understand now, Angelus." She looked at him. "Or should I call you Angel?"

 

"Angel." He covered her rough little hand with his own. "The end is coming. We're going to stop him, I promise you. You'll be able to die. You'll be able to rest, at last."

 

"And that other me -- you'll take care of her, too?"

 

He stared at her; she wasn't pleading for him to go back to the "true" Darla for a renewal of their partnership or love affair. Darla was asking him to let her die -- in every universe. She was asking him to stake the Darla he knew and end her unnatural life forever.

 

"I will," he said. "I promise you. Every version of you will be at rest."

 

Darla sank against the back of the chair and smiled at him -- a warm, genuine smile the likes of which he'd never glimpsed on her face. Despite her sickness, she suddenly looked as beautiful as he had ever seen her. "Thank you." She laughed weakly. "It's so funny."

 

"What is?"

 

"That he was the one I wanted," she said. "That you were the one I cast away."

 

***

 

"Cordelia, you're staring again."

 

"I'm trying to lip read."

 

"It might actually be less rude if you simply interrupted them and asked them what they're talking about."

 

Cordelia abandoned her attempts to follow Angel and Darla's conversation from half way across the room, and looked at Wesley. "When Angel gets in the Darla-zone, it pays to stay alert. One minute he's all 'She means nothing to me' and the next he's firing us and going fruit loops. Don't tell me you're not getting little deja vu shivers here?"

 

"I think it's different, this time," Wesley said. "I think he only wants some kind of resolution with her."

 

"You hope," Cordelia said. Angel and Darla were still engrossed in their heart-to-heart. Fred was frenziedly scribbling in her corner; Lorne and Gunn had given up trying to follow what she was doing and were currently bonding over a mutual appreciation of early Motown. Cordelia was free to talk to Wesley privately, and while she didn't relish the prospect of what she had to tell him, she could no longer put it off. "Wes, there's something --"

 

"Cordy, I need to --"

 

They stopped simultaneously. "You first," Cordelia said.

 

"No, please. You."

 

Cordelia took a deep breath. "Wesley, we're not bringing the other me back with us. If anyone has a right to make the final decision, I do, and I'm saying no. I know what it's like in her head; that was me for a day and a half. The pain -- it just burns you up. After a whole year, she's all burnt away inside. What's left --" she shook her head, "It's just a body. When this universe goes, it'd be kinder to let her go with it."

 

She steeled herself, waiting for the inevitable tide of outrage and anger.

 

It didn't come.

 

"I know," Wesley said softly. "I suppose I knew as soon as we saw her, really. But I couldn't bear the thought that there was nothing I could do -- that there was no hope for you --"

 

"For her," Cordelia corrected him gently. "She's not me."

 

"I realize that now."

 

Cordelia nodded. "But -- thank you for wanting to do it." Wesley smiled and quickly squeezed her hand.

 

"Finished!" Fred yelled.

 

Everyone looked around, or up, or broke off their conversations. Cordelia, closely followed by Wesley, hurried back to where Fred sat. As she pulled up a chair, she looked down at the arithmetical jumble on the tabletops and remembered, with some sadness, that acceptance letter from Duke she'd had to throw away. The best education Daddy's stolen money could buy -- maybe that would have helped her understand a little bit of what Fred was working through here. It was easy to miss when she was hiding from cheese, but Fred, Cordelia realized, was smart. Scary smart. Willow smart.

 

Probably smart enough to handle herself around Angel, she thought. Which is good, considering Angel's track record for not handling himself around women.

 

"So, Fred, what are we dealing with?" Angel said.

 

Cordelia looked up to see him, not huddled in a corner staring at his precious Darla, but leading her back to their group. She smiled in welcomeand was relieved to see him smile back.

 

"I'm not 100 percent sure," Fred said without looking up from her calculations, "but I think we are dealing with some serious trouble."

 

"Okay, when the girl who was talking about switching dimensions like it was running out for milk and a newspaper says that something is 'serious trouble,' I start to worry," Gunn said. "What's the what?"

 

"That last reality quake should have been the last," Fred said. "The level of chaos shouldn't have been reversible." Cordelia thought of the thorned and bloodied library and shuddered.

 

"But Angelus did reverse it," Wesley said.

 

"Which he shouldn't have been able to do at all," Fred said. "I don't understand the magic you're talking about, but apparently Angelus is able to force the natural laws of this universe to make sense. It's as if -- as if he's constructing a past for this universe as well as a future. Binding it with the true universes of the multiverse, one that began with the Big Bang and won't end until the end of time. He's changing this dimension from unreal to real."

 

"And this is a problem why?" Gunn said.

 

"Because," Angel said, "if this dimension becomes real, then it gets a whole lot harder to get home."

 

"When did you go to M.I.T.?" Cordelia asked.

 

"Just listened to Fred," Angel said. "Did I get that right?"

 

Fred nodded grimly. "Except that it won't just be harder to get home. It will be impossible."

 

Cordelia's stomach clenched. Gunn's jaw dropped. "Impossible? Why?" Wesley said.

 

"Because this universe will have fundamentally changed its nature since we entered it," Fred said. "It won't bear the same relationship to our universe that it did before. It's like -- like trying to navigate by the North Star if you've been moved to the southern hemisphere. You may still understand the principles, but you don't have the guide you need."

 

"This making any sense to anybody?" Cordelia said.

 

"I could show you the math --"

 

"That won't help, muffin," Lorne said. "But thanks for offering. Okay, we have to stop Angelus. Pronto. How do we do that?"

 

Wesley straightened up. "We could stake him," he said. "I know none of us wants to consider what that would mean -- staking a form of Angel that has his soul. But if that's what it takes --"

 

"Won't help," Darla said. "Very few people stay dead here for long. You never know when somebody who perished in a quake or died of old age is going to pop back up."

 

"I guess that explains why you don't just throw yourself in front of a bus," Cordelia said, hoping her tone communicated just how much she wished Darla would do something of the kind.

 

Darla smiled thinly at her in reply. "I can't tell you how many times that Irishman's showed up, railing at Angelus, saying his threw his life away for nothing. If you think I drink, you should see Angelus after one of those visits."

 

Cordy felt her body go cold and weak at the thought of Doyle, torn from his death and returned to it, over and over and over again. Angel caught her eyes for a moment, and she could see he was equally stricken.

 

Wesley had no memories of Doyle, but he was obviously very affected too. "That means -- even if we did succeed in staking Angelus, he might return and take up his work again before we could get home," he said. "Oh, dear. Poor Mr. Giles."

 

Cordy frowned. "Giles?"

 

"He said -- the dead kept calling him, that Buffy kept asking him to save her, over and over," Wesley said. His face was pale. "He was telling the literal truth. She does do that. No wonder he was drinking."

 

"These people come back?" Gunn's voice was rough, strained with thinly veiled emotion. "You mean -- my people might --"

 

"Not the sacrifices," Darla said. "Those deaths are -- different, somehow. Those people stay dead. Angelus used to hope and hope they wouldn't, but -- and oh, he tried everything. He tried animals. He tried demons. But in the end, it all comes down to the same thing. He has to take a human life, end it for good. Now, though, he thinks he's very close to being done. Maybe just one more person."

 

"And he'll commit that sacrifice as soon as he can," Angel said. "Tonight?"

 

"Probably," Darla said.

 

"We gotta move fast, then," Gunn said. "Gotta take the guy prisoner before he gets the chance --"

 

"We can't do that." Cordelia was surprised to see it was Fred who had interjected. "Angelus knows which portals are active and when. He knows exactly where to be. That's information we need."

 

"There's about a twenty-five percent chance he's headed here, right?" Lorne said. "How convenient and yet how distressing."

 

"Those odds aren't even close to good enough," Angel said.

 

"We might draw him here just by thinking about it," Fred suggested.

 

Cordelia stared. "All we need is the power of positive thinking?"

 

"Well, kind of," Fred said. "You see, we're -- more real -- than this universe. That means our thoughts and emotions have a powerful influence here. In fact, I think --" She suddenly looked more uncertain, more hesitant, than she had in a long time. "In fact, I think this entire universe is based on our emotions. On our fears, maybe. I mean, what's everyone here afraid of the most?"

 

There was a long moment of silence, during which nobody seemed able to speak or meet anyone else's eyes. Finally, hesitantly, Angel said, "That I would lose control of myself. That I'd lose my friends."

 

"I kinda figured that," Fred said. "And, um, I think maybe Cordelia and Wesley were worried about that too."

 

"Understatement of the year," Cordelia muttered.

 

"So that happened here," Fred continued. She looked at Gunn.  "And your friends getting hurt -- that was something you were worried about?" He nodded, his expression distant, turned inward. "And for me -- well, it's been a long time since the world seemed to make sense. The signs of instability are really awfully overt here. I think that's my fault. I can't figure out Lorne's, though."

 

"Oh, that's easy," Lorne said breezily. "I have a deep-seated terror of bad interior decorating, which has come to pass. I mean, look at this place," he said, gesturing at a cow-patterned bench. "And have you SEEN the drapes at Cordelia's now?"

 

Cordelia was pretty sure that home decor wasn't Lorne's worst nightmare, but there was little point in pursuing it now. "That's kind of weird, the universe just -- knowing -- what we were scared of. Like it was eavesdropping or something."

 

Fred nodded. "I think it used those emotions. Both to shape this universe and to try to destroy it."

 

"So stuff we think actually happens?" Gunn said. "Okay, nobody think about the Stay-Puft marshmellow man."

 

"We exert a powerful influence," Fred said. "In order to break down completely, the universe would need to throw off that influence as much as possible. So I think -- I think we were being driven apart. That our emotions about certain things might have been amplified. Like about, say, cheese."

 

Cordelia shared a quick glance with Wesley, then with Angel. Angel's guiltathon, her freakout, Wesley's anger -- all of it had been off-the-scale, hadn't it? And she wasn't at all sure this weirdo universe was to blame. But they could consider that later. She said, "You're telling us we have influence over this whole universe."

 

"Your dream come true," Wesley said with a smile.

 

Cordelia pretended not to hear. "So, Angelus -- if we all sit here and call his name, he'll show?"

 

"That's still not a guarantee," Angel said. "If our fears are as strong as our wishes, then there's no telling what effect we will or won't have."

 

"We have to set him up," Wesley said. "We have to -- draw him out. Find a way to follow him, to discover what he knows."

 

Gunn shook his head. "The guy's a step ahead of us. He's Angel -- except he knows this dimension better than we do by a mile. How do we get a step ahead of him?"

 

"We use what he doesn't have," Cordelia said. The others all stared at her, and she hated to finish what she had to say -- but she knew she had to. "We use the one thing he doesn't know."

 

***

 

Darla had made sure to wheedle a bottle of whisky from Angel before they parted. It was sad, even a little pathetic, that their final farewell had proved such an anticlimax. For decade upon decade, they had been triumphant, glorious lovers, as decadent and beautiful as the world they had inhabited. Now he was a quiet, melancholy man in a bar and she was his broken-down ex, begging for a drink.

 

What the hell. She'd gotten the drink.

 

She lifted the bottle to her mouth and gulped deeply, telling herself it was necessary for the deception; Angelus would never believe that she'd wandered off all day for any reason beyond getting more alcohol. Darla dropped the bottle back into her bag, took a quick breath, grasped her real prize tightly, and went into the Hyperion lobby.

 

The lobby was as silent and dingy and depressing as ever. Darla could only face it because she was, at last, pretty sure it was the final time. "Angelus!" she called. "Come downstairs!"

 

A few moments of silence, then the soft pad of bare feet on the hotel's threadbare carpet. "Where were you?" He sounded sleepy and vaguely annoyed. "I wanted you."

 

As Angelus, clad only in a pair of boxers, appeared at the top of the stairs, Darla put on her prettiest smile. "I was out getting a present for you."

 

Angelus stared. She laughed as merrily as she could. "Do you like it? Its name is Fred."

 

The thin young woman whose arm Darla was gripping with the little strength she had left looked up at Angelus. Her face looked nervous, but Darla could tell it was only an act. So far.

 

"I don't want to know her name. I don't want to know anything else about her." Angelus came down the stairs slowly; after that first hard glare, he didn't look directly at Fred. "Where did you find her?"

 

"She was begging for money near the liquor store," Darla said. "She's a runaway, I think. I told her we'd pay her to play with us tonight." Angelus had used the story himself before. It worked more often than Darla would ever have thought.

 

"I won't do anything too weird," Fred said, and the trembling in her voice wasn't feigned. Good, Darla thought. Now you know what you're dealing with. That works for us, and makes this little performance of yours halfway believable. "The lady was nice to me --"

 

Angelus walked up to them, leaned past Fred's shoulder and kissed Darla hard. As his tongue pushed between her lips, Darla wondered idly if he'd want to take her right in front of the girl. They used to enjoy that, once upon a time. She didn't care -- she and Angelus could probably teach this mouse-brown waif a thing or two -- but she suspected Fred wouldn't feel the same way. The girl was pressed between their bodies; Darla could feel her shaking now, frightened, probably most of all by her invisibility to Angelus.

 

He didn't want to see the girl, didn't want to face what he had to do.

 

But he would, Darla knew. In the end he would.

 

When their lips parted, he whispered, "Take her to the car."

 

"Is it time already?" Darla asked, cocking an eyebrow.

 

"Past time," Angelus said.

 

 

 

*****************Chapter 10*****************

 

The reality quakes were occurring almost continuously now; a constant, faint tremor made the loose change in the tray by the convertible's gear box rattle and chink even when the car was parked.

 

Angel reached down and pocketed the coins, without taking his gaze off the Hyperion's distant entrance. It took every ounce of self-control he possessed not to get up and walk straight in the front door, get Fred and Darla out of there, find some other way -- any other way -- to get home that didn't involve this.

 

He had dreaded this all day, been filled with an unaccustomed helplessness as he watched Fred rehearse the plan, over and over, with Darla. Even the renewed companionship of his friends as they counted away the hours at Cordelia's apartment had done little to soothe him; he could only watch numbly as Fred went out the door to face Angelus. She'd dressed herself in her Pylean tunic, drawn her hair back from her face; when she went out, she'd been smiling, as though there were nothing to fear at all.

 

"Lorne, go round the back of the building," Wesley said, breaking the silence. "Just in case they come out the other way."

 

"Not loving that plan," Lorne said. "If Angelus sees me and guesses we're thinking of tailing him, I'll be guacamole inside thirty seconds."

 

"He's only seen you once, briefly," Wesley pointed out. "He'll be less likely to recognize you."

 

"Yeah, because I don't stand out in any way," Lorne said, pointing at his horns.

 

Wesley was unmoved. "That's IF he sees you, which he won't, because you're going to be extremely careful."

 

"And I was thinking this would be the perfect opportunity to indulge my rash and self-destructive side," Lorne muttered as he went.

 

Wesley nodded to Gunn. "Let's wait in your truck. We'll have to move quickly when they come out."

 

Gunn nodded, and they walked away, toward the truck parked some distance along the road.

 

Angel kept watching the hotel. He was probably the only one who could see it, as the street lamps were no longer working -- instead of throwing light on to the road, they were raining cherry blossoms. The petals fell to the ground silently and softly, heaping into thick, cloud-like drifts that obscured the gray buildings and littered sidewalk. It was a surreal but eerily beautiful sight.

 

"It's degrading," he said.

 

Beside him, Cordelia looked down at her Pylean royal bikini and sandals. "Well, granted it lacks a certain dignity, but there's no need to get snippy -- Oh. You're talking about this universe. Right." She shivered, and pulled the cape more tightly around herself. "It's also way too cold. The real L.A. is never this chilly in May."

 

Angel took off his jacket and put it over her. "I don't understand what was wrong with the sweatshirt."

 

"Hey, I have my pride. We're going home tonight, and I refuse to be seen in my own dimension in Star Trek leisure wear." She pulled the jacket over her bare legs. "Thanks."

 

Angel had resumed his vigil over the hotel's front entrance and said nothing.

 

"Okay," Cordelia said. "You're doing that 'tense and withdrawn' thing again. Normally, I wouldn't mention it, but since we're on slightly shaky ground in more than the literal sense, I really want to keep talking."

 

Angel made himself look away from the Hyperion. "I'm worried about what might be happening in there."

 

"May lightning strike me for even contemplating what I'm about to say, but --" Cordelia took a deep breath. "I think we can trust Darla. She's still skanky and evil and everything, but she's for real about wanting this over. You can tell when you look in her eyes."

 

"I know," Angel said. "I saw it too. And I'm not worried about Darla --" He broke off, reluctant to pursue a line of conversation that might jeopardize the fragile understanding he had reached with Cordelia. Afraid it was already too late for that, he met her eye, expecting to see disappointment, disapproval, or worse.

 

To his surprise, Cordelia looked sympathetic. "You're worried about Fred."

 

There was no point denying it. "Yes."

 

"Well, don't be," Cordelia said firmly. "She's smart. I mean, not just book-smart. She survived five years in Pylea on her own. She can look after herself."

 

"This is different," Angel said quietly. "I just wish there were some other way --"

 

"Me too," Cordelia said. "But we need to make sure Angelus doesn't take anybody else. And we needed a human he'd never met before. That leaves Fred. But I think she can handle it."

 

"I hope so," Angel said. "She doesn't understand who it is she's dealing with in there. She trusts me; she thinks he's just -- just a bad man with my face. She doesn't understand we're the same. She doesn't understand that if she gets too close I'll hurt her."

 

"She really likes you a lot."

 

"Yes."

 

After a pause, Cordelia added, gently, "You really like her too, don't you?"

 

"Yes."

 

"And you told her why that's a no-go."

 

He met her gaze. "Yes."

 

Cordelia sighed. Softly, she said, "Curses suck, huh?"

 

Her commiseration was so sincere and earnest that Angel found himself smiling a little. "I've thought that more than once. But I can still have her friendship. And -- yours," he added hesitantly. When Cordelia didn't say anything, he decided to plunge ahead. "I should have told you about Darla. I'm sorry. But I thought if I did, I'd lose you for good. I was afraid of that happening."

 

Cordelia glanced at the hotel. "With good reason, apparently." She shivered again, and pulled his jacket up so it covered her arms as well as her legs. "I guess -- we could have given you the benefit of the doubt a little more than we did. Which is NOT to say," she added, furrowing her brow, "that lying to me is okay. But you've given me your jacket, so you're earning points back already."

 

"Thanks." Angel hesitated, then frowned. "Although I'm not sure I can afford to buy you another whole new wardrobe."

 

"Oh, that's fine." Cordelia casually leaned back in the passenger seat, then glanced slyly sideways at him. "Actually, I was thinking maybe jewelry this time."

 

"Or jewelry --" Angel began, then stopped.

 

Lorne had appeared from the alleyway that ran along the side of the hotel. He was moving quickly along the street, almost running. As soon as he reached the convertible, he hopped breathlessly into the back seat. "It's time to play the music," he announced. "It's time to light the lights. They're leaving."

 

As he was speaking, a car which was the twin of Angel's own roared away from the hotel and accelerated along the street. When its taillights were faint, twin glows, Gunn pulled out and began to follow it. A moment later, Angel put the convertible into gear and followed him.

 

Cordelia twisted around and looked hopefully at Lorne. "You didn't happen to overhear where they were going?"

 

"Strangely, they were a little light on idle chitchat."

 

"Then we'll find out when we get there," Angel said.

 

***

 

Darla leaned her head back and for a moment actually enjoyed the wind in her hair; a convertible was an insane choice of transport for a vampire, but this fleeting, glorious sensation of reckless speed was one benefit of Angelus' insanity. The evening air was cool, and as they pulled further away from the city center, it became -- well, not fresh, Darla supposed. But marginally less smoggy.

 

All in all, a wonderful night for the world to end.

 

Casually, Darla lolled her head around to glance behind them. Fred was huddled in the back seat, her long hair blowing about in the wind. The girl was as white as her tunic, and Darla wanted to laugh; Fred actually thought this was scary. She didn't know the half of it. But she would.

 

Darla's eyes flicked back to take in the road behind them; in the very great distance, almost further than her weak human eyes could see, a car was following them. Angelus didn't seem to have noticed. So far so good.

 

Just then, he braked sharply and pulled the car over. Darla tensed -- had he caught on?

 

But no -- Angelus only looked at Fred and said, "We're here."

 

Darla turned her head forward again and sighed in relief. A few hundred yards up was their destination -- spotlights shone on the stories-high letters that spelled out "Hollywood".

 

"This is where you want to do it?" Fred said, still playing along, still killing time. But her voice was shaking so badly now that Darla could barely understand her. Not that it mattered; the fear made it all more credible.

 

The earth's low rumbling was more noticeable now that the car had stopped. Angelus cocked his head, listening, then held out one hand to the girl in the back seat. "Yes. This is the place. Come on." He spoke to Darla without turning to her. "Get the bag out of the trunk."

 

"What's the magic word?" Darla sing-songed. Angelus ignored her and began towing Fred uphill. Darla sighed and went to the trunk; as she lifted the bag, she could feel the weight of the ropes within, hear the clink of the metal.

 

Up ahead, Angelus was leading Fred toward the base of the letter "D." Darla trudged uphill behind them, her shallow breath catching at the effort.

 

By the time she caught up, Angelus and Fred were standing at the foot of the "D". The letters were shaking with the trembling of the earth. Fred looked down into the city. "The lights are nice from up here."

 

"Yes, they are," Angelus said without looking. "Put your hands behind your back."

 

Fred's eyes widened as she saw him bring the ropes out of the bag. "Oh, now, we didn't say anything about getting tied up."

 

"That's what you're getting paid for," Angelus said smoothly.

 

Darla glanced down, and saw, not one car following them, but two. And both vehicles were stopping; apparently Angel and his friends planned to come the rest of the way on foot. How circumspect, she thought. How marvelously sensible. Angelus might just be so distracted killing the girl that he wouldn't notice.

 

Angelus was distracted now; he took Fred's wrists in his hands and pulled her arms back in something that was half an embrace. Was he acting? Darla's eyes narrowed. "Come on," he said. "It won't be for long." Neither will this performance, Darla thought; she's got about five seconds before he just knocks her out cold.

 

"That's -- that's --" Fred was panicky now, but she suddenly straightened up and lifted her chin. "That's extra."

 

"What?"

 

"You'll have to pay me more," Fred said. "How much are you going to pay me?"

 

Angelus snarled, and Fred's eyes went wide --

 

And the earth split open.

 

Darla screamed as the ground began shaking violently -- more violently than she'd felt in any other quake, ever. She fell, digging her fingers into the hard, dry earth in an attempt to keep herself from tumbling down the hill.

 

Angelus tackled Fred, bearing her down with him. Fred tried to struggle against him, but his body pressed hers to the ground. Over the roaring of the quake, she could hear Angelus shout, "This can be hard or it can be easy. My advice is to lie still and let it be easy."

 

"I won't!" Fred cried, pushing ineffectually against his chest. "I won't!"

 

Darla tried to struggle to her feet, but the convulsions of the earth wouldn't let her. Fred was only a few feet away, but she might as well have been miles.

 

"You will," Angelus said, and in one lightning-fast move, he pinned Fred's arms above her head. One quick shift and he had both her wrists in a single powerful hand. "Darla!" he yelled. "We don't have much time! Get the knife --"

 

Fred screamed, as loudly and desperately as Darla had ever heard anyone scream -- which was saying something.

 

This is it, Darla thought. The world was ending -- the fabled, oft-prophesied apocalypse was actually happening -- and Angel and his goody-two-shoes friends weren't here. The earth was shaking violently, and Darla was certain that if they hadn't climbed the hill already, there was now no way they could. 

 

Their plan had never stood a chance of succeeding. Darla wondered how she'd ever allowed herself to be convinced to participate.

 

She had nothing left to lose, so --

 

Darla pulled the knife out of the bag and began crawling toward Fred and Angelus. Fred was still struggling, staring up into Angelus' cold, blank face as though it were the most horrifying thing she'd ever seen. Probably it was. "Darla!" Angelus yelled.

 

"Coming, my love," she whispered.

 

Then she lifted the dagger high and plunged it into his back.

 

Angelus froze, his body a long, hard line of shock and betrayal and pain. He stared at Darla. She smiled. "Payback's a bitch, isn't it?"

 

Fred took advantage of the moment and pushed him off her, as hard as she could; Angelus fell into the dirt, still staring at Darla as though he had never seen her before. But when Fred scrambled to her feet and -- somehow, despite the tremors -- began running away, his face changed. Pure, vicious wrath twisted his features -- first figuratively, then literally, as the demon emerged. "Do you know what you've done?" he shouted.

 

"Yes," Darla breathed. "Yes, I do."

 

***

 

Get away, get away, get away get away getaway --

 

Fred was half-running, half-falling down the hill. She'd seen the cars coming; where were they? Why hadn't they come to save her from that -- that --

 

She saw Angelus' face again, the mirror of Angel's, so hard and brutal and evil. The blankness in his eyes as he had looked at her, ready to kill her --

 

"Fred!" She peered into the darkness to see Angel running up toward her. Wearing that same face --

 

No, Fred thought, Deal with what's in front of you. And that's not the same at all. She kept running toward him as fast as she could until she collided with him.

 

Angel tumbled with her to the ground. The night sky was shimmering purple and green above their heads. They lay on a bed of four-leaf clovers. The letters above them now spelled out "Jersey City." The end was nigh.

 

"Fred, are you all right? Did he hurt you? We were trying to get to you, but the quake --"

 

"I'm okay," she said. "He didn't hurt me." And she smiled up at him, to prove that it was true; for some reason, that made Angel shut his eyes tightly, as though he couldn't bear to look at her for a moment.

 

A second later, and he was back to himself; Angel managed to get to his knees as the others -- Lorne and Cordelia and Gunn and Wesley -- all fought their way up beside them. "We don't have much time!" Fred said.

 

Cordelia looked at her incredulously. "You think?"

 

In the sky, glittering bands of light began to form -- like the aurora borealis, Fred thought, if the aurora borealis could catch on fire. It would have been beautiful if it hadn't meant the sky itself was tearing apart.

 

"Angelus?" Wesley gasped.

 

"Up there," Fred gestured. "Darla stabbed him."

 

"Right on, Darla!" Gunn said with a fierce grin.

 

"Let's not give him any more time to recover, shall we?" Lorne said. "Let's get uphill, get to our portal and get the hell out of here."

 

"No," Fred said.

 

"What?" Wesley said, his face very pale. "No time?"

 

"No need," Fred said, pointing behind them.

 

The others turned to see what Fred had seen -- a new dimensional portal opening up, a swirling vortex of blue and gold. In the distance, yet another sparkled into being. "What's happening?" Angel said.

 

"This dimension's finally coming apart," Fred shouted over the whine of the rending earth. "Portals are opening up everywhere -- so we could open up one anywhere we want."

 

"We have to hurry," Wesley said. "Come on, let's go!"

 

Fred got unsteadily to her feet and began hurrying after the others. But Angel didn't join them. Fred, Wesley and Cordelia all stopped as the saw it. "Angel, what's wrong?" Wesley yelled.

 

"Darla," Angel said.

 

"Do NOT start that now!" Cordelia cried. "She's not real. Get over it!"

 

Angel shook his head. "That's not what I mean --"

 

***

 

Darla laughed as she watched the brilliant swirls of light and color in the sky, on the ground. She'd have worked for the end of the world before now, if only she'd realized it would be so impressive.

 

Angelus' hand clamped around her arm. She didn't even bother to turn around and face him as he said, in a low voice, "You realize what you've done?"

 

"I'm sorry, dear boy," she said. "But it's all for the best."

 

"Yes, it is," he answered. "I see that now."

 

He brought his hands around her in an embrace that would have been entirely gentle and loving, but for the bloody knife in his hand. "It's time," he whispered in her ear. "It's time for me to finally give you what you wanted."

 

"Angelus?" she said, her voice tremulous.

 

"I denied you. I never used to do that. I thought it was right -- but now that's all changed. I'm going to give you what you need. We'll be the same again, just like we used to be."

 

Darla began to shake as he drew a scarlet line across her shirt with the tip of the knife.

 

"You won't need your liver when I make you a vampire," he said.

 

***

 

"He's gonna sacrifice Darla?" Cordelia yelled. "How can you know that?"

 

"He's me," Angel said. "I'm him. And if I believed the things he believes -- that's what I'd do."

 

Wesley shook his head in frustration. "Can it make a difference now, Fred?"

 

"He might be able to hold this world together for a while." Fred had to shout to make herself heard above the background noise. "Forever -- I don't know."

 

"But if we go right now, he won't have time to stop us! Am I right?" Cordelia protested, and Fred nodded in response.

 

Angel shook his head. "I promised," he said. "If he turns her as he kills her -- that will freeze her as a vampire. Her transformation by death -- that's forever. She'll have to be a vampire forever. And I promised her I wouldn't let that happen." Angel's face became still, determined. "Take Fred and go," he said.

 

Wesley stared in disbelief as Angel turned away from them and ran back toward Darla.

 

***

 

In more than two hundred years of existence, Angel had thought he'd seen just about everything there was to see. But the end of the world -- this was something else again.

 

Around him, huge chunks of turf and grass were splitting from the ground and floating upwards, like icebergs slowly breaking apart in a warm sea. The sky was rapidly filling with a mass of disintegrating earth, and the flickering rainbows which lit the heavens were spreading into the gaps where the ground had been. The distinction between sky and ground was fast disappearing.

 

Angel ran, ignoring the chaos around him, ignoring the dull rumble of the dying universe, ignoring everything except the need to find the next firm place to put one foot in front of the other. "Darla!"

 

"Help me -- help --"

 

He stopped, twisted around in a desperate effort to track her voice to its source. A second later, he realized the futility of what he was attempting: now that the most basic laws of cause and effect were breaking down, there was no guarantee that the place from which he heard her call was where she was.

 

As he hesitated, the ground beneath Angel's feet became spongy and then started to turn to liquid. He made a snap decision based on nothing more certain than instinct, and ran.

 

Then he saw her.

 

She was lying on the ground, perfectly still. Angelus crouched over her, wielding a knife. Angel froze, afraid he was already too late --

 

But there was no blood pooled on the ground, no wound in Darla's stomach, and after a second Angel saw why. The blade of the knife bent in Angelus' hands; whatever it had become, it wasn't metal, and it wasn't sharp.

 

He could still save her.

 

Angelus threw the knife down in disgust. Then he stood up and saw Angel.

 

The moment stretched, while the maelstrom whirled around them, growing in intensity. A tree drifted past, upside down, a woman and a child clinging to its roots.

 

Angelus subtly shifted his feet and arms into what Angel recognized as his own preferred attack position. When this became a fight -- as it must, he realized -- he would be facing an opponent with his strength, his skills, his experience. The outcome of a battle in which both sides were perfectly matched, Angel knew, would be simply a matter of luck.

 

Angelus smiled thinly. "I'm guessing you're not here to lend me a knife."

 

"It's over," Angel said. "Let it end."

 

He glanced at Darla, lying on the ground. Her chest still rose and fell; she was unhurt, but unconscious. Angel guessed that in her already weakened condition, she had passed out from shock or fear. "She wants to die. Let her."

 

Angelus' face twisted in contempt and anger, and it was an effort for Angel not to look away. Seeing his true, demonic aspect in Pylea had been horrifying -- but somehow knowing the depth of hatred he was capable of showing as a man was even worse. "And how would you know?"

 

"She told me."

 

Angelus stared at him for a moment. Then his features contorted into a snarl. "You're one more ghost sent to haunt me. If you won't help me, I'll do this myself. With my bare hands."

 

Abruptly, he ripped open Darla's blouse, exposing her midriff. He placed his hands in the hollow between her ribs, preparing to dig his fingers into the flesh and pull her apart --

 

Angel tackled him.

 

They rolled together across the uneven ground, away from Darla's unconscious form. When they came to a halt, Angel was on his feet first, a second ahead of Angelus, who winced as he regained his footing. Of course -- Darla had stabbed him. Angel felt a momentary surge of confidence at the knowledge that they were not perfectly matched, after all.

 

On the other hand, Angel had neither fed nor slept in days. Which one was now stronger?

 

Angelus kicked, and Angel feinted to avoid the blow. He felt wet drops fall on his hands and head; at first he thought it was water, but when he looked down at himself, he saw streaks of reflective silver on his skin and clothing. It was raining liquid metal.

 

Angelus tried to punch him; Angel anticipated the move, and blocked him easily. "Go back to them. Go back where you came from," Angelus said. His eyes flashed with something Angel thought was envy. "You must want that."

 

Left hook -- right jab -- block. "I want to save her."

 

Angelus spun, grabbing Angel and pinning his arms behind his back. Now they were locked together, being slowly painted silver by the metal rain. Angel could see Angelus' profile, shining gray against the dark, swirling sky. "I am saving her," Angelus said in a low voice.

 

"You're going to make her like us. That's not saving her; it's damning her."

 

Angel jerked his elbows up, using his weight to force them into Angelus' ribs. He was rewarded with a loosening of the grip on his arms, just enough to enable him to free himself. He twisted around, and now they were face to face again. Back where they had started.

 

"She's dead no matter what," Angelus said. "Maybe I rip out her liver; maybe her heart gives up, or maybe it's alcohol poisoning. You can't save her either."

 

"There's more than one way to be saved."

 

But Angelus wasn't listening. "Maybe a bomb gets her, and she fights for three days while her insides liquefy, until she doesn't have the strength to hang on anymore. Or maybe she goes insane, kicks so hard against the restraints she breaks her ankles. Then, when you plead with the doctors to loosen the ties, just a little, just to give her some comfort, maybe then she works one hand free and scoops out her own eyes while your back is turned. Is that better than becoming like us? Is that better than being damned?"

 

Angel thought of Wesley, broken and dying. Cordelia, sinking into madness as he looked on helplessly. The pictures Angelus' words conjured were so vivid, so terrifying, that for the briefest moment, his concentration faltered.

 

Angelus lashed out, and Angel went down hard.

 

He started to get up, but he was tired now and fractionally too slow. In a moment Angelus was on top of him, pinning him to the ground. "I'm going to tell you something, because I can see you haven't worked it out for yourself yet. I can live with being damned, because now I know redemption is a fat, sweet lie. There's no such thing. Not for us."

 

Angel was being crushed into the ground so hard it was barely possible to speak. "Don't -- believe -- that --"

 

"Oh, the possibility existed once," Angelus went on, almost conversationally. "There was Buffy, wasn't there? But we took away her innocence in every way there is and went to hell for it. Strike one!" On the last word, he lifted Angel's head and slammed it down on to the hard earth.

 

"And we came back from hell, but we still couldn't have her, so we had to walk away from the only good thing in our miserable existence. Strike two!" Angel braced himself as, again, his skull was pounded into the ground. He could hear buzzing in his ears and his vision was starting to blur.

 

"And then there was a new city, and a job worth doing, and people to care about, and we fucked that up too. Strike three, you're OUT."

 

On the last word, Angelus slammed Angel's head down again, even harder, stunning him. Through the disorientation and pain, Angel gasped, "It -- didn't happen -- like that --"

 

"Maybe not for you. Maybe not yet. But it will. There are only so many second chances, my friend. And you and I both used up our quotas a long time ago." Angelus lowered his voice and whispered in Angel's ear, "I'm going to save the world. I'm going to save Darla. And you're not going to stop me."

 

Then Angel felt his head connect with the ground again, and again, and again, until darkness mercifully descended.

 

***

 

Gunn's truck was gone. To be more accurate, where Gunn's truck had been there was now a funnel-shaped whirlwind of plastic and metal auto parts. The Plymouth, fortunately, had fared better and was both in one piece and where they had left it. Wesley felt a profound sense of relief at the sight of something so mundane and so normal as a parked car.

 

He shepherded the others toward it through a world which was now little more than a random and disparate sequence of unconnected scenes -- a snowstorm through which camels roamed existing just yards from a tiny patch of desert where a lone polar bear perspired

 

And then there were the portals. It was ironic, Wesley thought, that he'd spent most of the past week tracking elusive interdimensional gateways, and now he was surrounded by them. A myriad of swirling vortexes floated over their heads, swaying and drifting as if in the current of a gentle breeze. But none of those gateways, Wesley was certain, led where they wanted to go.

 

"Get in," he said, indicating the car. "Quickly. Fred, if you say the words here, will it open a portal that'll take us home?"

 

She nodded. "This reality's very weak now, it should be possible to open a portal anywhere -- but -- Angel --"

 

They were all looking at him: Fred, Cordelia, Gunn, Lorne. Wesley hesitated, then shook his head. "There's nothing we can do. He chose to go back. "

 

"You can't just leave him here!" Fred cried.

 

"We don't have a choice," Wesley said. "I'm sorry, really I am. But -- look around. If we wait for him, this place will collapse around us before we can leave. Angel's made his decision."

 

Fred glared at him, her eyes flashing with real anger. "You're still mad at him. You don't care if he gets stuck here."

 

Wesley felt a stab of pain, mixed with guilt. "I'm mad as hell. But it's not that I don't care -- " He shook his head helplessly. "There are more lives at stake here than Darla's."

 

"He sure picks his moments," Gunn said. "I guess we should have known. It was always gonna be about Darla, at the end."

 

"No," Cordelia said.

 

Wesley looked at her; she was standing rigidly beside him, staring into the pandemonium surrounding them as if she could make Angel appear from it by force of will alone. Gently, he took hold of her arm. "Cordelia, he chose to go back. We'll probably never understand why. But he's gone now -- "

 

Cordelia shook her head fiercely. "I understand why. He went back for her because he's Angel." She turned around to confront the car's other occupants. Fred was smiling slightly, aware she now had an ally.

 

"It's not just because it's Darla. If it were me -- or you, Wesley -- he'd go back for any one of us. He went back for her because that's who Angel is." Cordelia's voice was rising as she became more vehement. "He tries to take care of people and goes off the deep end if he can't. It can't be all sweet and touching when he does it for us and then flaky and stupid when he does it for someone else. It's just Angel. He's a total obsessive dork, and he's our friend, so let's get up there and get him."

 

Fred was smiling broadly now, and Cordelia was grinning back at her. Wesley had the feeling he was witnessing the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

 

Of course, it was a beautiful friendship that wasn't going to last very long, as it would certainly be destroyed along with the rest of them when the universe ripped itself apart.

 

"Fred," Wesley said. "Say the words. Open a portal home."

 

Cordelia stared at him. "I swear, Wesley Wyndham-Pryce, I will never, ever forgive you --"

 

Wesley cut her off. "We're not going yet. Fred is going to open a portal back to our universe. She and Lorne are going to stay here and mark it. That way, we might just have enough time to find Angel, return here and still get home." He took a step away from the car, then looked back at Gunn and Cordelia. "Well, what are you waiting for?" Cordelia didn't move for a moment. Then she jumped out of the car and hugged Wesley. "I will love you to the end of the world for this."

 

Which was probably all of three minutes away, Wesley thought as they headed into the chaos. But it was the sentiment that counted.

 

***

 

Cordelia was running as quickly as she could -- it was more jumping, really, to and from various islands of reality. Through the swirling colors and surreal environments, she could glimpse a tiny raft of what looked like a normal stretch of the Hollywood hills. She moved as fast as she could, jumped lengths that would have gotten her on the Sunnydale track team if she'd ever deigned to try out, and listened for Gunn and Wesley behind her.

 

If we get out alive, she thought, I am going to smack Angel upside the head, then give all the guys big hugs until they die of embarrassment, and then I am going to try and market this as a video game, because it would be cool if it weren't so damn real.

 

"Angel!" she shouted for what seemed like the thousandth time. Was her voice even carrying through this strange, changeable atmosphere? No way to know. She could only keep calling. "Angel?"

 

"Cordelia?"

 

She turned and saw Angel. He was almost completely coated in what looked like silver paint, mixed with trickles of blood welling from cuts on his face and hands. Cordelia breathed out a quick sigh of relief. "Angel, thank God. We found you. Did you save Darla?"

 

Angel looked completely confused, even panicked. "You're not supposed to be here -- this is dangerous -- why didn't you -- "

 

"Why didn't we go home without you?" Gunn asked. "Good question."

 

Wesley glared at Gunn. "We aren't leaving you behind, Angel. And that's it. We have to make our way back to Fred, right away."

 

"There's a lot of being-all-stupid-and-heroic going around these days," Cordelia said. "You're our friend. You're always gonna be our friend, even if you screw up. And we're not going home without you." She reached out and tugged at Angel's arm.

 

Angel stared down at her, and his expression of disbelieving hope changed slowly to understanding. Then, to Cordelia's immense surprise, he embraced her tightly. "I can go home," Angel whispered. He was holding Cordelia so fiercely she could hardly breathe, as if she were his life raft in a stormy sea. Without letting go of her, he turned to Wesley and Gunn. "You came back. You saw what I did. What I am. And you still came back."

 

"What we saw here proves what you could have been," Wesley said, "But you're not the same as the Angel from this universe. We were -- I was -- wrong to think you were."

 

"You both got yourselves stuck in tailspins," Gunn added. "But you pulled up out of it in time. He didn't."

 

Wesley finished, "You could have fallen as far as he did -- if you'd chosen. But you chose something else."

 

"So if you could choose to start moving, like NOW, that would be a good idea!" Cordelia freed herself from Angel and started hauling him back in the direction they had come. He didn't budge for a second; then, he took several unsteady steps after her.

 

Then he stopped.

 

Cordelia tried to pull him into motion again, but he wouldn't move. She grabbed his shirt and pulled harded. "Come ON!"

 

Angel lifted a hand and gently wiped blotches of sliver from Cordelia's cheek, where her face had pressed against his stained clothing. He smiled. "You have beautiful eyes."

 

Cordelia stared at him. Then she stared past him, at the two prone forms lying on the ground behind him, silver masses almost indistinguishable from the sodden, metallic earth. No wonder she hadn't noticed them until now. One was Darla; the other had to be -- oh God --

 

Cordelia looked up into Angelus' face. He gestured toward Angel -- the real Angel -- and said, "I made bad choices. I want to make one good one. You came back for him, not me."

 

Wesley, Gunn and Cordelia were all frozen in shock for the moment it took Angelus to turn away. He walked to Darla's limp body, picked her up, and said, quietly, "Go home." Then he walked into the chaos.

 

The silver rain changed to water; Angel's gray-frosted form began to wash clean, clearing his face to their view for the first time.

 

It took another second or two for them to snap out of their surprise; then Gunn said, "We have GOT to run."

 

***

 

It seemed to Angel he'd been walking forever. He couldn't remember where the journey had started, or where he was trying to go. He only knew he was tired. They were making him walk, and he wanted to stop.

 

He tried to sit down.

 

"What the hell you doing?" Gunn said. "You gotta keep moving."

 

Full consciousness returned slowly, and Angel became aware that he was being supported between Gunn and Wesley, his arms draped over their shoulders. Cordelia was just in front of them, scouting out a safe route through the chaos.

 

"Darla --"

 

Cordelia looked over her shoulder. "Angelus didn't take her liver, and he didn't vamp her." She seemed to consider that for a moment. "I think beating the crap out of you might have been therapeutic for him."

 

"Then she's --"

 

"We are seriously playing beat the clock here," Gunn interrupted. "Walk; don't talk."

 

In the confusion around them, that sounded like a sensible plan. Angel concentrated on bearing as much of his weight as possible on his own legs, leaning on Gunn and Wesley only to steady himself. They moved in silence, focused entirely on finding a path through the turmoil. The last shreds of logic were evaporating from this reality -- Angel saw sounds, heard colors, fought waves of dizziness as gravity twisted crazily, destroying any possibility of distinguishing up from down.

 

"Angel!" Fred's voice seemed to be coming from straight ahead of them -- right behind a shimmering silver cloud. Angel weighed the possibilities for a second as the others gathered around him. The ground on all sides was dissolving; they were crammed on to a sliver of firm  earth.

 

"What's happening?" Gunn said.

 

"Through there," Cordelia gestured. They all stared at each other briefly, then clutched hands and leapt, as one, into the silver cloud.

 

For a few moments, it felt as though they were floating, not falling. Maybe, Angel thought, gravity didn't work the same way in the cloud. Perhaps they were going to float forever -- they would never get home -- Angelus had beaten him. He'd wondered which of them would be stronger; now he knew.

 

Then he felt Wesley's hand on his right sleeve, Gunn's on his left. Cordelia's arms were wrapped around his chest. Angelus' strength had been only his own. Angel shared the strength of others. And that was why he was the one who was going home.

 

Then the ground crashed up to meet them and they all landed, hard. Cordelia crumpled to her knees; Angel saw Gunn fall flat on his face near her. Wesley had landed on his back and apparently had the wind knocked out of him; he was gasping for breath.

 

Fred and Lorne pulled them into the car, one at a time. Angel landed in the driver's seat; he had never been so grateful to feel the solid leather of the steering wheel in his hands.

 

He looked at the others. "Thanks for saving me."

 

They seemed unmoved. "How come we're letting the guy with a head injury drive?" Gunn asked.

 

"I have the keys," Angel said.

 

Fred peered up into the sky -- a tapestry of chaos. Her face was sad. "Poor dragon."

 

Angel gunned the motor and drove into the portal of light.

 

***

 

Darla's first thought when she opened her eyes was, Damn it. Still alive.

 

She tried to sit up, but stress and exhaustion had taken their toll on her, and she didn't have sufficient strength. As she struggled, strong arms wrapped themselves around her, and she felt herself being lifted into a sitting position.

 

She tilted her head back to see who her helper was. When she saw the face of the man looking down at her, she frowned. She knew the features well, of course, but there was something different about them. They were softened by an unfamiliar tenderness.

 

"Angel?" she asked hesitantly.

 

He turned away from her for a moment, reaching out to lift something she couldn't see from this angle. As he moved, she could see the rip in the back of his shirt and the wound beneath it where she had stabbed him. She realized who was beside her.

 

"I'm sorry," Angelus murmured.

 

"So am I," Darla said, and meant it.

 

"I found this in your bag," Angelus said as he turned back to her. He pressed a small leather hip flask into Darla's hand.

 

She opened the flask and held it to her lips. The scent of bourbon wafted into her nostrils, so strong even her weak, human sense of smell could not mistake it. She began to tip the flask, intending to drain it and sleep out the apocalypse. Something stopped her.

 

"I don't want it right now," she lied, handing the flask back to Angelus. "Maybe later."

 

"Darla," he said quietly. "There isn't going to be a later."

 

She looked at him steadily. "Let me see."

 

Gently, he put his hand behind her head and supported her while she surveyed the dying universe. Beneath them, what remained of Los Angeles was breaking up, huge swathes of the city simply dissolving into the all-consuming beauty of the vast, rainbow strewn sky. Red and orange and yellow and green and blue and indigo and violet. Even the light was dying, Darla realized, dissipating into its component elements and serenely drifting into the endless dark.

 

"It's beautiful," she said.

 

"Yes," Angelus said. "It is."

 

"Do you think --" Darla hesitated, then realized if she didn't ask the question now, she'd never ask it. "Do you think you have to have a soul to appreciate beauty?"

 

Angelus raised a hand and stroked it softly through her hair. "You can have a soul and fail to see it. It's something else, I think. Something more."

 

He was smiling, a small, sad smile, but still a smile. Darla found herself smiling back, and her beating heart filled with something she couldn't name. "We're not the people we were."

 

"No," Angelus said. "We're not."

 

"Hold me closer, Angel." She named him -- one last time -- and he didn't object.

 

He embraced her more tightly, and although Darla wasn't certain, she thought some of the sadness lifted from him.

 

Angel's lips brushed hers, very gently, and Darla fought back her exhaustion to respond. They'd known every kind of pleasure together, and yet in this moment it seemed that only this kiss, this once, was real.

 

Her world shrank until it was filled by his cheek against hers and his arms around her. And then that world, too, was gone.

 

Darla slept.

 

 

 

**************Epilogue**************

 

 

 

Fred screwed up her eyes as the Plymouth came crashing out of the portal, engine roaring, vortex swirling, bottles crashing as they landed --

 

-- in a nightclub.

 

And it looked a lot like the Longhorn, except that things were shiny instead of leathery --

 

Lorne shook his head. "You know, I've been thinking about remodeling the bar." He took up a couple of unbroken bottles. "Anyone for a nightcap?"

 

They clambered out of the car, shaking their heads. Wesley leaned toward Angel. "Are you certain you're all right?"

 

"I'm all right," Angel said. Fred was worried; he hadn't looked good when he had fallen with the others out of the silver cloud. But he was smiling at Wesley and Cordelia now. "And I'm certain."

 

"At last," Cordelia breathed. "We're home."

 

"Fred?" Angel said. "We did get home, right?"

 

"This looks familiar to you?" Fred said. Everyone nodded. "Then it's our home dimension. Or close enough as makes no difference."

 

"Makes no difference?" Gunn's forehead went all wrinkly when he got upset, Fred noticed. "Excuse me, but any difference is a big difference."

 

"Did we not just learn this?" Cordelia said.

 

Fred shrugged. "You don't understand the multiplicity of true dimensions. I know, for sure, we don't have counterparts in this universe; the portal let us in without a problem, and that would only work in a dimension that recognized us as real. But that doesn't mean that we're the same Fred and Angel and Cordelia and so on who left this dimension to begin with."

 

"What, we have a couple dozen other versions of us hopping dimensions?" Cordelia scoffed.

 

"No," Fred said. "There's an infinity of others. Some of them will get home. Some of them won't. Some of them will find new and better places. Some of them will die. That's the way it works."

 

Wesley was shaking his head  in disbelief now. "Well, that's taken all the enjoyment out of watching Sliders reruns."

 

"'Bout time somethin' did," Gunn said under his breath.

 

"We might not really be home?" Angel said. He looked confused, and Fred really couldn't blame him. It was all pretty confusing, when you let yourself think about it.

 

"Pish-posh," said Lorne. "Of course we're home. Look at the bar. See the tusk marks? That's from that fracas when somebody interrupted Mordant the Bentback's Barry White medley. That's for real, and I know it."

 

Everyone cheered up at this and set about the tricky business of getting the car from the nightclub to the street. Fred helped them at it, and if she was the only one who remembered that the tusk marks had been on the other bar, she wouldn't bother reminding them.

 

In the alley, Cordelia said, "Okay, made myself a promise." She walked up to Angel and smacked the side of his head with the flat of her hand -- not too hard, but hard enough to make it a slap.

 

"Ow!"

 

"That is for running off and scaring us, even if it was all noble and stuff," Cordelia said. "Now, this is for being all noble and stuff, even if you did run off and scare us." She pulled him into an embrace.

 

Angel put his arms around her and returned the hug. Fred felt a quick, unwilling flare of jealousy that was instantly snuffed as Cordelia let go of Angel and hugged Wesley and Gunn in turn. 

 

When Cordelia finally pulled away from Gunn, she straightened her cape and said, "Now, who still has David Nabbit's phone number? Because I have a video game I want to pitch."

 

"It's at home," Angel said. "Let's go."

 

As they drove toward the hotel -- home base in this dimension too, apparently -- the mood became giddier and giddier. Angel was clearly happy to be in his friends' company again; he kept turning to them, wanting to talk about this or that, to the point that Lorne had to motion for him to keep his eyes on the road.

 

But as they chattered on and on, Fred felt an all-too-familiar set of emotions returning to her: confusion, fear, uncertainty. Before, she'd had a job to do, equations to complete -- something to focus on besides her own worries. But now, she couldn't stop asking herself: What was real from the dimension they'd just visited, and what was fake? What would follow them here? What had she forgotten from before? A lot, she figured.

 

And the five years the world went spinning on without her -- what had happened? To her family, her friends, her coworkers. She held her hand to her face as an image shimmered in front of her: a goldfish, with fins like shining veils, circling in a bowl. His name was -- Albert. Yes, Albert. Did anyone come to feed him while she was gone?

 

Fred couldn't have said why that, of all the things she might have chosen, tugged at her throat. She blinked hard and hugged her arms around herself.

 

Angel noticed. "Everything okay, Fred?"

 

The others were talking animatedly among themselves; for a moment, her conversation with Angel was a private one. "I'm all right," Fred said. "Just feeling a little -- scared."

 

A little of Angel's ebullient good humor evaporated. "Fred, I want you to know -- I understand. You've seen the worst that I am, in every way. If you don't feel comfortable around me -- that's okay."

 

"Oh, no," Fred said quickly. "I'm not scared of YOU."

 

Angel seemed genuinely confounded. "You're -- not? But Angelus --"

 

Fred shrugged. "Sure, I was scared of HIM. But he's not here. I just deal with what's in front of me. And, right now -- you are."

 

Angel looked at her. She couldn't tell if he was pleased or worried. His expression was a little of both. "Thanks," he said at last. "Then -- why are you scared?"

 

"For the love of me, please remain facing forward while you're driving," Lorne said.

 

Fred tried to explain. "I've been lost for a long time. I still feel lost."

 

"Lost?" Gunn laughed and patted her shoulder. "You just got yourself found."

 

"I know the adjustment will be difficult, Fred," Wesley said. "But think of all the comforts of home you must have missed. They're all still here waiting for you."

 

Fred thought about this. "Is -- is there still strawberry ice cream?"

 

"And 30 other flavors at a Baskin Robbins near you," Cordelia said with a grin.

 

"And it just rains rain here, right? No silver or cherry blossoms or anything?"

 

"Real rain only," Angel promised.

 

"And nobody will call me a cow or put an exploding collar on my neck?"

 

"Highly unlikely," Gunn said. "Anybody tries it, they got us to deal with." He pounded his fist into his other hand for emphasis.

 

Fred brightened. "And the X-Files is still on? That's my favorite show."

 

"It's still on," Cordelia said guardedly, then shook her head. "You are the queen of setting yourself up for disappointment, aren't you?"

 

Fred paid this no mind, just kept creating beautiful lists in her mind as Angel pulled the car up in front of the hotel. "And there's still Mexican food, right? And all the good-smelling scrubby stuff at the Body Shop? And, ooh, water slides?"

 

"Plenty of water slides at the wide variety of theme parks L.A. has to offer," Gunn said. Then he added, mostly to himself, "That portal jumping's a fun ride, too -- sell it to a theme park, we could make some money."

 

"You're sure about that?" Fred said.

 

"Trust me," Cordelia said. "Tacos everywhere. And soap."

 

The front doors of the hotel were before them, and Angel was smiling. "Can I say it? I'm going to say it."

 

Wesley glanced at him. "Say what?"

 

Angel pushed through the doors triumphantly and said, "There's no place like --"

 

Home. That was the next word, home. But Angel didn't say it. Instead, he stood in the doorway, staring at the figure inside the hotel. A short girl with red hair -- nobody Fred had ever seen, in any dimension. "Willow?" Angel said.

 

Cordelia seemed to know the girl too. "Hi, what's --" Then her voice trailed off.

 

Slowly, the girl named Willow stood up. Something was wrong. Something was very, very wrong.

 

"It's Buffy," Angel said quietly.

 

Behind Fred, Cordelia gave a little gasp. Willow nodded and started to say something, but she choked on her own sob.

 

Angel clutched onto Wesley and Cordelia's arms as though he lacked the strength to stand alone. Fred could see that his hands were shaking, his eyes wide.

 

Willow finally whispered, "I'm so sorry, Angel. But Buffy -- she's --"

 

"No," Angel interrupted. "No. No, this isn't real. This can't be real." Suddenly, Fred felt his hands on her shoulders; he was staring at her with frightening intensity. "You said we might not be home. This might be another universe."

 

Fred nodded dumbly.

 

"I need to know -- is she dead in our universe? Or are we in another universe where she died? Tell me. Tell me!"

 

Willow was standing very still, her expression half-tearful, half-confused. No one else had moved; Cordelia and Wesley and Gunn were looking at Fred too, now. Waiting for her to give them the answer.

 

"I can't," she said. "There's no way to be certain. This is the reality we have to live with. This is home now."

 

Home, Fred repeated to herself. It ought to mean everything. But it can mean anything. Anything at all.

 

*********

END

 

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