"I thought you said -- this plan made -- sense," Charles gasped.

"It does," Fred panted, hazarding a glance over her shoulder. What she saw wasn't reassuring -- the mob of angry gypsies was barely twenty yards behind them, their torches bobbing up and down as they chased Fred and Charles through the dark forest.

"Oh yeah?" Charles wheezed. He was using one hand to try to keep his turban on, with only limited success. It was beginning to unwind at the top. "Leaping out -- in front of the gypsies -- who want to kill us -- makes sense?"

"Sure," Fred said. Her chest was tight with the effort of taking in enough air to run and speak at the same time. "We make them chase us -- lead them right to Darla -- then the gypsies and vampires -- will fight each other."

"And this helps -- how?"

"Darla won't kill the gypsies -- 'cause Drusilla will have told her -- that's why Angel's curse wasn't lifted -- the first time."

Something which might have been an arrow whizzed so close to the side of Fred's head that she felt a cold breeze in her ear. She grabbed Charles' hand, and they started to weave and zig-zag between the trees, heading all the time back in the direction of the caves.

"So," Charles gasped, "Darla's tryin' not to kill the gypsies -- we're tryin' not to kill Darla -- so tell me -- who are the gypsies tryin' not to kill?"

Fred didn't answer, just kept running.

"I think I just found the flaw in your thinking," Charles said. "Go faster. Next time -- I come up -- with the plans."

Noises in the forest. Voices, feet pounding -- a mob, not even trying to conceal their approach.

The vampires all lifted their heads, turning as one toward the as-yet-unseen danger. Spike rubbed his hands together, his eyes glittering yellow and predatory in the darkness. "Looks like we're going to see some action after all."

"No, no," Drusilla moaned. She had raised her hands to her head and was dragging her fingers through her hair, ruining the carefully pinned and curled style. "This is wrong, all wrong. They're not supposed to be here!"

Next to her, Angelus shuddered. He could barely stand up, never mind fight.

"Get in the cave," Darla ordered. She pushed Angelus toward Spike. "Take him."

"I'm not missing out on a perfectly good riot to nurse Angelus' hangover," Spike said.

"Angel," Drusilla whispered. "Angel..."

"I TOLD you not to call him that!" Darla exploded.

"Actually," Angelus' voice said calmly, "I prefer it."

But Angelus had not spoken.

Darla spun around. Angelus -- the other Angelus, the one Drusilla insisted on calling Angel -- was standing behind her. Darla masked her fury with a smile. "I'm so pleased you could join us," she said. There was a woman with him, and it took Darla a second to place her; she looked very different without the wig and orange gown she'd been wearing at the ball. She, like Angel, wore strange clothing -- the woman looked brazen, even to Darla's jaded eyes, in trousers. "And you've brought your little whore, too. How nice."

"I'd think someone with your personal history would be a little less free with words like that," the girl said coolly. "My name is Cordelia, by the way. My friends call me Cordy but, hey, how about you don't."

Spike's mouth was hanging open. He looked at the Angelus who had slumped against a tree, blank-faced and trembling, and then at the Angelus standing in front of Darla. "That's no phantom. He's real. Damnation, would someone PLEASE just EXPLAIN to me what in HELL is going on here? Because NONE of this makes any SENSE to me!"

Drusilla patted him on the arm comfortingly. "Don't be vexed. You'll get used to it, just like me."

"Cordelia. Now I know what to tell them to put on your gravestone." Ignoring the girl, Darla directed her full attention to Angelus. He was standing only a few paces away from his other self, yet in every other sense they were worlds apart. "You had to follow me, didn't you? See, the flame still burns in you."

"Don't flatter yourself," Cordelia scoffed, but when Darla looked into the eyes of the other Angelus she saw a flicker of something that told her she wasn't so far from the truth.

"They're coming closer," Drusilla said. Her eyes were going golden now too, with the nearness of human rage and blood. "Very close now, Grandmummy. The gypsies didn't wait for us to find them. Everyone is spoiling the story now, and someone must pay. I want MY story, and I will write it in blood. The blood's beating closer now. Thump thump."

"We might want to concentrate on the rapidly approaching angry mob," Spike said. "Could be trouble. More trouble than these two, anyway -- the astonishingly unwanted extra Angelus and the girl with the bad dye job."

Cordelia scowled at him. "Irony is so gonna bite you in the ass on that one." But Darla noted that she, too, was glancing over her shoulder at the gypsies.

"Spike, Dru." She flicked her fingers toward the sound of the din. "See to the gypsies. Under no circumstances are you to kill them. Maim all you like."

"I haven't maimed in an age," Spike said, grinning in anticipation. He and Drusilla ran off into the night.

"Cordelia," Angel said. "Get him away from the gypsies. Keep him out of this if you can."

It took Darla a moment to realize what he meant. When she saw Cordelia moving toward Angelus -- wasn't one enough for this scavenging little wench? -- she wanted to scream. But the gypsies were coming ever closer, and all her hot words about preferring to see Angelus as dust had gone cold for her now.

"Angelus?" she said quietly. "Go with her into the cave. I'll come for you later."

"I don't want to leave you," Angelus said. He would not look away from Darla's face, and she had never found his gaze so welcome.

"You are some pathetic," Cordelia said. "But you're gonna be some pathetic for the next hundred years or so. I'm going to see to it." She grabbed Angelus' arm and began pulling him toward the cave, away from Darla. For one beautiful instant, Darla saw a flicker of her darling boy's old fury in his eyes -- but then it was gone, lost in the sickening mire of guilt and horror. He stumbled into the cave with Cordelia. At least he would still obey.

A few feet away, a crash in the underbrush was swiftly followed by screams and yells. The gypsies -- and, from the sound of it, some of Angel's human pets, too -- had found Spike and Drusilla. Darla and Angel looked toward the clamor; she could glimpse torchlight wavering through the branches, the too-quick silhouette of an upraised hand slashing downward. By the time she turned away, Angel was staring at her once more. They regarded each other for another moment of silence.

Finally he said, "It's my turn to ask you to dance."

Darla curtseyed. "Very well," she said. "Let's dance."

Branches swished as Drusilla ran through them, little lashes in the night. A forest of whips, how lovely. If only she could enjoy them.

The horrid gypsies were running at them, shouting, and it would be so sweet to snuff them out, wet fingertips to the flame. But that was not the end of the story.

"Look out!" shouted a voice in English. It was the man with no hair, ducking to one side, dragging the girl with long hair with him. The two of them liked Angel as he was. As they saw Drusilla and Spike, their eyes went even wider.

"Bloody hell, not this one again," Spike groaned as he saw the girl. "And who's the freak in the turban?"

"Oh, they're not gypsies," Drusilla said happily. "You can kill THEM."

Spike grinned. "About time something went my way tonight."

The man with no hair got between the girl and Spike. "See, this is another flaw in the plan," he muttered. "Two flaws and counting."

Then the gypsies burst through the undergrowth. Everyone stared at everyone else for a long moment. Too much thinking, Drusilla decided. Not enough bleeding.

Drusilla shrieked -- one long, high, wavering note, as much singing as screaming. All their minds went silver-white. She sought one fear that would hold them all, held it in her mind's eye, put it in their minds as well.

Through their eyes she saw the forest burst into flame.

The gypsies started to scream as they ducked and cowered. Unearthly orange light appeared to flicker through the trees, to drop like tears onto leaves that sent up sparks. The girl with long hair beat at her trousers; the man with no hair tried to help her. The gypsies were running in all directions, confused and unnerved. Spike shrank back too, but she took his hand in hers and quickly squeezed it twice -- their old signal for her best tricks and games.

"It's not real?" he whispered. When she shook her head and smiled, Spike began to laugh and laugh. "Oh, brilliant. Bloody brilliant. My perfect, vicious dove."

Her Spike, with her again. Her Spike, as romantic and deadly as ever.

"I shall see to the gypsies," she said primly. It was just like playing Wendy Houses. "You can kill the others."

"You think I don't know what you're up to?" Cordelia said.

Angelus looked up at her, bewildered, from the cave floor where he'd slumped in apparent exhaustion. She sighed. "Not YOU you. The other you. Angel. I know what you're -- what he's up to. 'Get him away from the gypsies.' He just wants me out of the battle. He's trained with me, like, ninety zillion times, and he still doesn't trust me in a fight. So, tell me, have you always been this absurdly overprotective?"

She shrugged as she said it, and the lancing pain in her shoulder reminded her that Angel might have had other, slightly-less-annoying reasons for getting her out of the fray. Angelus didn't answer; instead, he just lapsed back into his mute staring at the ground.

Cordelia was disappointed to feel her annoyance at Angel fading; it had been, by far, the easiest thing to think about. It was a lot less frightening than the prospect of Angel getting all sentimental about the ex-lover who was probably happy to kill him, now that she had a spare. It was a lot less uncertain than wondering what was happening to Fred and Gunn, caught between murderous gypsies and semi-murderous vampires. And it was far, far less painful than really looking at Angelus -- the Angel who had been.

This is Angel, she told herself. My Angel. It's easier to call him Angelus, but even if he hasn't changed the name yet, the rest is the same. He has his soul. He can love.

"Do you really want to be with Darla?" she asked him quietly.

Angelus didn't look at her, but after a few moments, he said, "She's my only hope."

"Hope? Hope of what? Being what you were before?"

He grimaced in such wrenching pain that Cordelia's first thought was that he was injured somehow, bleeding from a wound she hadn't seen. But he only said, "I don't want -- I can't -- but --" Angelus gripped his hair, pulling so hard Cordelia thought he might actually rip out hunks of it by the roots. "I want the pain to stop. I want it all to end. Darla can end it."

"By yanking out your soul like a bad tooth." Cordelia wanted to smack him. "News flash, buddy. If you do that, the pain doesn't stop. It just stops for you, and you throw it off on other people. The people who survive the ones you'll go on to kill." She suddenly remembered Giles' face as Jenny Calendar's casket was lowered into its grave. Cordelia hadn't allowed herself to remember that in years.

"Oh, God," Angelus said. He let himself fall back onto the stone wall of the cave. "You're right. You're right. It never ends. No matter what." Tears were in his eyes. Seeing him cry wasn't easier the second time.

Cordelia was startled at first -- she'd jibed at Angel a thousand times, in jest and in earnest, gently and brutally and every way in between. She knew his reactions in every shade and shape, could envision the looks that accompanied them all. Then she realized those reactions belonged to a century in the future; the man who wept before her now was still too raw, too anguished, for any blow to be less than devastating.

Stung by an entirely unfamiliar feeling of contrition, Cordelia knelt by his side. "I'm sorry. Okay? I didn't mean -- no, I meant it. But you should know it's not always going to be like this."

"No," Angelus said. "It's going to end."

His hand closed over hers, and she thought for one strange, confusing moment that he was making a pass at her. Then she realized that his fingers were wrapped around her stake.

"I won't be what I was before, and I can't be what I am now," Angelus said. "Soon I won't be at all."

"So this is your end," Darla said. "My majestic creature, reduced to this. Reduced to you."

Angel had considerable practice in ignoring Darla's taunts. He circled her silently in the night, focusing only on the nearby cries of the gypsies. And -- that sounded like Fred, in trouble --

Darla saw his hesitation, misinterpreted it and smiled. "You hate it, don't you?" she crooned. "Being so much less than you can be. What's become of you now? A quiet, mild-mannered sort of fellow, I'd expect. The sort of man humans might easily make a pet of, who tells himself he's happy with his obedient human lover."

Cordelia, obedient. Angel couldn't help it: He laughed.

"And you're so secure in your snug little existence that you can mock me," Darla said. Her dark lips twisted in a scowl that he knew was a poor mask for pain. He had hurt Darla thousands of times -- deliberately and accidentally, at her request and against her will and without even thinking about it. She'd done the same to him. It had never mattered much, one way or the other. Their spirits remained as unnaturally unscarred as their bodies.

But this was different. It hurt him now, to see that he had hurt her. Darla's pain had become real to him. Connor had made her real in a way he'd never known -- in a way she'd never known, until the very end.

"I'm not mocking you," he said quietly. "But you don't understand the future I know, Darla. You don't understand the man I've become."

"I will understand it," Darla said. She held up her hand. Cordy's hologram bracelet was still looped around her wrist, but his eyes were drawn away from it. To Angel's horror, the gold ring from the time machine glittered on one finger. "The one piece of jewelry you never gave me, my dearest -- a wedding ring. I had to find my own. Do you like it?"

"Darla," Angel said, not expecting her to listen, "If you understand what that does --"

"I do." He didn't doubt her.

"-- then you have to understand that you're not going to get to the future Drusilla knows. By leaving this time and taking me with you, you'll destroy that, forever."

"What do I care for your future?" Darla said. "I might not even go forward. I might go back -- teach you La Volta for real this time. Or farther, perhaps. You could learn about art from the Borgias, dip your fingers into those paints you're always trying to get me to admire. I can study the craft of poisons from the Claudians. Perhaps you and I will sail down the Nile on a barge, listening to Cleopatra tell us tales of the City of the Dead. We'll drink from the alabaster jars that they think hold immortality, and we'll tell them if it's true." Her voice changed from a dreamy softness to something far harder. "Or perhaps I'll drag you farther ahead. Centuries. Millennia. Who knows what we'll find then? It doesn't much matter. Wherever we go, we'll find blood, and you'll drink it with me, at my side."

"It's never going to happen," he said. Angel had no intention of staking Darla, but she didn't know that, and he didn't mean to let her guess. "I'm going to stop you."

Darla laughed. "As though you could." She slashed toward him, so fast he barely dodged it in time.

Two of the gypsies stumbled out of the forest, and both Angel and Darla tensed, preparing to defend themselves, and each other, from the intruders. But the gypsies were screaming, yelling, swatting at their clothes as though -- as though they were on fire. One of Drusilla's group hallucinations, then. Angel hoped the cry he'd heard from Fred was based on no more than fear of a vision.

But Spike and Dru were in those woods too --

Darla's fist slammed into his jaw, sending him spiraling off-balance. Even as she lunged toward him, he righted himself, blocked her blow and shoved her back into the dust. She scrambled to her feet, laughing bitterly as she pushed her blonde curls from her eyes.

Behind them, the gypsies, still in the grips of their delusion, began to stumble into the cave. Cordelia would have to handle them, injured arm or not.

"So this is all you want for me now," Darla said. "To end like this. Dust to dust."

"Your end is a finer thing than you know," Angel said.

"Hang on!" Charles shouted through the din. "I'm getting you out of here!"

Fred knew very well that Charles could no more see a way out of this conflagration than she could. He was only trying to comfort her in what were undoubtedly going to be their last moments of life.

Every tree was on fire, every branch, almost every leaf on the ground. The flames were orange and red, white and yellow, even blue. In a daze, Fred thought: so many different temperatures. She'd spent too much of her life with Bunsen burners not to know the various meanings of a flame's color. And it had caught fire so fast -- could Drusilla have used an accelerant? But what? And why lay a trap with something that could kill vampires too?

Before her stunned confusion could shift into anything that approximated thought, a figure appeared through the smoke and fire, apparently untroubled by the inferno.

"Well, well," Spike said. "What have we here? Not gypsies. Guess that means I can kill you." He smiled nastily. "Who wants to go first?"

Cordelia's first instinct, when Angelus grabbed the stake from her, was to grab it right back before he could do something stupid like plunge it into his heart. But his fist was closed, vise-tight, and Cordelia remembered a second too late that a even a weak, disoriented vampire was still far stronger than a human. Especially an injured human, she thought ruefully, as a bolt of pain shot down the length of her arm. For a second, she panicked -- then she had an idea.

He'd taken the stake, but she still had her knife.

Using her uninjured arm, Cordelia reached to her belt. The dagger's hilt slipped easily into her hand, and she quickly looped her arm through Angelus'. Now they were crouching face to face on the cave floor, Angelus holding the stake to his chest, Cordelia holding the knife's point against hers.

"If you're gonna kill yourself," Cordelia said, "then I might as well die too."

Angelus stared at her in sheer incomprehension, probably trying to decide if her threat was serious. "Why?" he asked finally. "You don't -- you can't know how it feels. What it means."

There were dark circles under his eyes, cuts on his face where horror had made him use his own nails to tear and scratch at himself. "No," she said. "I don't guess I can."

"You would let me do it, if you knew," Angelus said. "You would not sentence me to this despair."

"But that's just what you'd sentence me to. Don't you see? If you die here, in this cave, then you take the future -- MY future, the one that has you in it -- away forever. Everything I care about won't just be destroyed, it'll never even happen. You're not the only one losing your whole world." Cordelia looked him in the eye, and tightened her grip on the handle of her dagger. "I've got plenty reason to despair. So, whaddya say? C'mon. I'm ready when you are."

Angelus' hand tightened around the stake, and for one sickening, gut-wrenching moment, Cordelia thought he was going to do it anyway. Then his grip slackened fractionally and he lowered his head. "Let go. Let go and let me end this."

"No."

"Please," Angelus said. It sounded more like a moan of pain than a word. "I can't do it if --"

Cordelia waited for him to finish the sentence, then realized he probably didn't have words for what he was feeling, so she said it for him. "You can't do it because you know it'll hurt someone else."

"I can't," Angelus whispered. She couldn't tell if he was agreeing with her or just repeating himself.

"Listen to me," Cordelia said. "You've already had lesson number one of soul-having: It makes you hurt for every bad thing you ever did. This is lesson number two: Having a soul means caring about other people. And that's not a curse." Softening her voice, she went on, "I know you don't get this now. You're not gonna get it for a long time. But one day you're going to be with people you care about. People who care about you. And then you'll understand."

Slowly, he raised his head again and met her gaze. "You don't know what I am."

"No," Cordelia said steadily, "but I know what you're going to be."

Angelus looked at her for a long time. Then he slowly relaxed his grip on the stake, and Cordelia let out a long, shaky breath. She took the stake from him and put it out of his reach. "Okay. That's good. Now we're gonna stay right here in this nice, safe cave, out of the way of the fight until --"

There was a crashing noise behind her, and Cordelia jerked her head around just as two gypsies stumbled into the cave.

"-- Until the fight comes to us," she finished, leaping to her feet and placing herself between the gypsies and Angelus. The gypsies didn't see Cordelia and Angelus immediately -- they were occupied with beating their clothes as if trying to smother a fire, which was weird because Cordelia couldn't see any flames. No time to wonder about that now. The gypsies were incapacitated, and there were only two of them. With those factors in her favor, she was sure she could hold them off. Then one of the gypsies stopped beating his clothes and shook his head as if to clear it. He looked at Cordelia and nudged his companion. Then he shouted something in Romanii to the mob outside the cave. Within seconds more gypsies were running through the cave entrance. Four -- seven -- when the odds got too desperate, Cordelia stopped counting.

Through the entrance of the cave, she could see movement outside. All over the forest clearing, people were jostling about, but in the darkness and confusion it was impossible to tell if Angel was one of them. If she could get a better vantage point, maybe she'd be able to see him, attract his attention --

She shouted his name, but the din of the battle outside almost drowned out her voice completely. "Angel!" she yelled again.

The gypsies were advancing on her and Angelus now. Cordelia briefly considered grabbing Angelus and making a break for the cave entrance, then rejected that idea as foolhardy. They'd never make it out.

If only she could see Angel -- get somewhere he could see her --

She looked down at the gypsies, and suddenly realized they were no longer closing in. In fact, they seemed to be frozen in place, staring at her in a mixture of awe and fear.

Wait a second. She was looking DOWN at the gypsies?

And why was it suddenly so much easier to see out the cave entrance?

Cordelia turned her head and bumped it against the cave's rocky ceiling. It hadn't suddenly gotten lower; she'd gotten higher. When she looked down, her legs and feet were simply dangling beneath her. She was floating several feet above the ground.

"Oh, no," she said. "Not AGAIN."

Fred and Charles stumbled backward as Spike advanced on them. It seemed to Fred that everything was burning now -- every leaf and twig and branch around them and above them and under their feet exploding with bright, ugly flames. A tiny voice in her mind tried to insist it wasn't possible for the conflagration to spread so quickly, but the crackling, roaring noise of the fire in her ears smothered rational thought.

"There's a way through," Charles said. The smoke was making him cough. "Behind you --"

Fred turned around and saw a passage out of the blaze, between two widely spaced trees which formed a gate of fire.

But before they could run to it, a figure appeared in front of them, blocking the way. It was Drusilla, her dress whiter than the hottest flames of all.

"Dru, pet," Spike said. "Come and join in the fun."

Reflections of the fire shone in Drusilla's golden eyes. "Thieves of books," she said to Fred and Charles. "Scarpers of stories. You'll see how the story should end. Its last line will be death. Yours."

Hemmed in by fire and the advancing vampires, Fred realized with horror there was nowhere left to go. And she didn't even have a weapon -- somehow, in the confusion, she'd lost her stake.

She looked around frantically for something else she could use to defend herself, and saw one of the torches the gypsies had been carrying, still smoldering where someone had dropped it. It was better than nothing, Fred decided, and reached out to pick it up.

The torch crackled as she lifted it, sending a shower of hot embers over her hands. Where they touched her, they burnt her skin, and Fred cried out in pain. For an instant, panic and terror emptied from her mind, driven out by the reality of physical pain.

And the forest changed.

Where there had been one forest, Fred now saw two, layered over each other like paintings on glass. In one, the fire raged out of control. The other forest was cool and dark and the only thing burning anywhere near them was the torch she was holding. All at once Fred knew which was real.

"Fragile mortal minds," Drusilla said as she drew nearer. "Like spun glass, so delicate. See them shatter!"

"Charles," Fred whispered urgently. "Charles, this is going to hurt. Just trust me."

She touched his arm with the torch.

Charles yelled and snatched his arm back. He blinked rapidly, and Fred saw his eyes clear, as if something blocking his sight had suddenly been lifted away.

"Give me that," he said in a low voice. Fred surrendered the torch to him.

"Because I'm feeling generous," Spike said, sauntering toward them, "I'll let you choose how you die. On tonight's menu we have broken necks, choking and blood loss. What's it going to be?"

"How about the special?" Charles said. He threw the torch. It sailed through the air, straight toward Spike, who made no attempt to dodge it. He thinks it's part of Drusilla's illusion, Fred realized. He can't tell the difference either.

Spike laughed. "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but Drusilla's fire will never --" He caught the torch: " -- hurt me --"

As Spike's hand closed around the torch's glowing end, his face registered shock, then almost immediately contorted in agonizing pain. Flames shot up his arm, and it seemed to Fred it wasn't his clothes catching fire preternaturally fast, but his body itself. Of course, that was why fire was such an effective weapon against vampires -- why they feared it so much --

Spike was desperately trying to put out the fire before it spread further up his arm. "Dru!" he yelled. "Drusilla! Having a problem here!"

"Spike!" Drusilla's voice was high-pitched and wavering, like a child confronted with its worst nightmare.

Spike threw himself on to the ground in an effort to smother the flames. Drusilla screeched and ran past Fred and Charles, ignoring them in her desperation to get to Spike. But when she got to him, she didn't seem to know what to do, and could only stand over him, wailing and rocking wildly, as he flailed about. "Make it stop!" she howled. "Not my story, not my story, not my story!"

The torch was lying on the ground where Spike had dropped it; it had landed on damp earth and gone out. Fred picked it up and, with all her strength, hit Drusilla squarely on the back of the head.

For another second, perhaps longer, Dru continued to wail. Then, very slowly, she toppled forward, landing on top of Spike.

All around Fred, the imaginary inferno Drusilla had created disappeared, as suddenly as if a switch had been flipped. The forest was simply the forest again.

Spike writhed about, either trying to extinguish the flames or simply in pain. Fred watched him for a moment, then began beating out the flames as best she could. Charles sighed heavily before joining in. In a few moments, the blaze was out, and Spike and Drusilla lay singed and unconscious on the forest floor. Charles looked down at the two vampires. They lay in an untidy heap on the forest floor, still smoldering a little. "That'll teach you to play with fire," he said.

Angel lunged at Darla, his stake missing her shoulder. She whirled about, laughing. Her boy had gotten careless in his later life. He couldn't even seem to aim directly for her heart.

"Very sloppy. Perhaps you're out of practice. Or perhaps you can't bear to kill me," she purred. His eyes flickered to look into hers, then away. Aha, she thought, it's true. He doesn't want me dead. He still wants me, down deep. He still wants to be what he once was.

Darla knew she could win this battle now; anyone who was willing to destroy his enemy would ultimately triumph over anyone who wasn't. But she didn't just want to stake this pathetic duplicate anymore. She wanted to hear him admit what he still really was inside, how wrong he'd been to ever think of leaving her side.

Angel swung toward her, feinting left at the last moment; his stake grazed her arm, slicing through the skin, and Darla winced as she stumbled back. She couldn't afford to get sloppy herself; Angel might not be the magnificent creature Angelus had been, but it would be easy to underestimate him.

She kicked out at him, expecting him to dodge the blow, just buying herself time to think. What if she could win him back, soul and all? Could she convince the gypsies to remove the curse on both Angeluses? Could that possibly work?

A brief vision of a night in bed swam up in her mind, and she smiled. Having two versions of Angelus might yet prove impossible, but it was well worth finding out. Nothing could ever stop them then.

"You've missed me," she said as they circled one another. "You've missed what we once were."

"At times I missed you," Angel said simply. "I even went back to you, twice. But I never wanted you badly enough to pay the price of staying."

The thought of that -- an Angel who could come back and simply choose to leave again, who could put a limit on how badly he wanted her -- outraged Darla. She cried, "And that's all you have for me? I created you! You don't think I'm worth the price?" Darla readied her own stake. Two Angeluses was a nice dream, but so was watching this one turn to dust. "You told me we would be together forever, Angelus. You made me a promise. A promise you couldn't keep."

He froze. Angel stood shock-still, staring at her, anguish written on his face. When he spoke, his voice was low and uncertain. "I made you a promise," he said. "I promised you I'd take care of him. And I didn't. I couldn't. I tried -- I tried so hard, Darla, and I failed. I failed him and I failed you."

Him? Take care of who? None of this made any sense. But Darla could tell that what Angel was saying now was vitally important, at least to him. She felt her curiosity begin to get the better of her anger. "What do you mean?"

"It's the only promise I ever made that really mattered," Angel said. He was shaking his head from side to side, the pain in his eyes and his voice deeper than she had ever seen in him. "I won't ever get another chance to tell you, Darla, so I'm telling you now. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

Sorry for leaving her? Sorry for what had become of him? Hopeful despite herself, Darla stepped just a bit closer. "Angelus?"

She felt the blow before she even saw it -- his fist slamming into the side of her head, then her jaw, then again. The world went gray, then black, and she felt the ground swimming up to meet her.

"I'm sorry," she heard once more, and then she heard nothing else.

Darla lay crumpled upon the ground, the skirts of her ball gown collapsed around her. Angel stood still and kept watching her for a minute or more, in case she was faking unconsciousness. She wasn't.

Looking around, he saw a patch of shadow between two trees which was semi-concealed and out of the way of the fighting. Grasping Darla unceremoniously by the ankles, he dragged her limp body toward it.

When he got there, he found he wasn't the only one to have had that idea. Fred and Gunn were standing guard over the unconscious bodies of Drusilla and Spike.

"All RIGHT," Gunn said when he saw Angel. His ballroom finery was ripped and torn, the blue-velvet drapery long gone, and his turban had almost completely unraveled. "That's three for three."

Fred looked equally battered, the torn gold lace at her throat feebly reflecting the moonlight. "All those hard decisions we kept saying we'd think about when we got there? Well, we're there." She gestured tiredly at Spike and Drusilla. "Darla's got to keep existing, for Connor to be born," she said, in the voice of someone who would like to argue but wasn't going to. "But does the future get more warped with a Spike and Dru that know the future, or with no Spike and Dru at all?"

Angel looked down at the three insensible vampires lying on the forest floor. "Drusilla has to be around to sire Darla again. Spike has to be around to bring Drusilla to Sunnydale to get strong again. And there's a lot of things they did, or didn't do, that we can't even guess at. For better or worse -- well, mostly worse -- they're part of the world we're trying to get back."

Fred was evidently thinking much the same thing. "We have to keep everything as close as we can to how we know it should be. That's our best shot at fixing the future."

"If we can't stake them, what are we gonna do with them when they wake up?" Gunn asked. His turban slipped down over one eye, and he quickly finished the job of unwinding it that the chase through the forest and the battle had started.

"I don't know," Fred said. She looked at the long strip of cloth Gunn was preparing to throw away. "Don't get rid of that."

Gunn looked at her. "I'm not putting that thing back on. No more Caliphing for me. As far as I'm concerned, Madagascar can be a democracy from now on."

Fred pointed at Spike and Drusilla. "I meant, we can use it to tie them up while we figure out what to do."

"Oh. Right." Gunn handed Fred a wad of the bandage-like cloth which had formerly been his turban, and together they started to secure the vampires.

Angel looked around the clearing, saw the mouth of the cave and felt his stomach drop. "Oh, God," he said. "Cordelia."

The forest clearing was almost empty now, and with a rising sense of fear Angel realized why -- nearly all the gypsies had gone into the caves, driven there by Drusilla's fire hallucination. He had thought he was making sure Cordelia was safe; in fact, he had sent her into a trap.

He charged into the cave, knocking people roughly out of the way as he struggled to break through the mob. He was so intent on getting to Cordelia that it was several seconds before he realized none of the gypsies were attacking him.

Angel crashed out of the crowd, almost stumbling as the resistance of bodies suddenly ceased. He was standing alone in an empty space near the back of the cave. Directly in front of him he saw Angelus, crouching against the cave's back wall, his hands over his face. The gypsies seemed to be afraid to go any closer to him, although Angel couldn't understand why; his former self was clearly incapable of defending himself.

Then he heard Cordelia's voice. "That's right, you'd better do some serious cowering. Because, as you can see, this is scary, high-level magic mojo I'm doing right now."

Angel turned around, expecting to see Cordy. Instead, he saw her feet, dangling in front of him at eye level. He craned his neck to look up at her: She was scowling, but Angel knew her well enough to recognize that what seemed to be irritation was more likely a mask for fear. She pointed down at the gypsies and said, "There's more where this came from, you guys. This completely intentional levitation is just the beginning. You'd better hope I don't REALLY get mad." Then she glanced down and saw Angel, and she gave him a nervous smile. "Hey there!"

"Are you okay?" he asked.

She was hanging in mid-air, drifting a little from side to side in the draft from the cave entrance. "Yes, except --"

"Except what?"

Cordelia lowered her voice. "I think I might be glowing. Maybe. Am I glowing?"

There WAS more light at the back of the cave than there should have been. Although it wasn't possible to tell exactly where it was coming from, Angel thought he detected a faint lambency in the air around Cordy. "Uh, maybe just a little."

One of the gypsies took a step forward. Angel turned, but for once Cordelia was faster. Her foot shot out, and she kicked the man on the shoulder, making him stagger back.

"Back off, buddy! I'm from the future, and I can float and -- and -- you don't know what else I can do. Like -- I can leap tall buildings at a single bound -- except you people probably think three stories is tall for a building, and jumping three stories is impressive but maybe not terrifying --" She cast a look of desperation down at Angel and whispered, "Help me out here."

"She can shoot laser beams out of her eyes!" Gunn yelled. Angel half-turned to see that he and Fred were pushing their way through the crowd to join Angel at Cordelia's feet.

Fred said, "I don't think they know what laser beams are, Charles." The gypsies were starting to murmur among themselves, and some of them were edging closer.

They were in a standoff, Angel realized. The gypsies had the advantage of numbers, but they didn't know how to respond to Cordelia's supernatural power. Now neither side could risk attacking the other.

"Who's your leader?" he asked loudly.

"I am," said one of the gypsies, stepping forward. He was a tall man with a gray beard; Angel remembered him from the brief period they'd spent in the gypsy camp. This was Gia's father -- Mother Yanna had called him Gregor, Angel recalled. Gregor was holding his arm awkwardly and smelled strongly of fresh blood. "You said you would leave us, and you are still here. Your deceit breaks our truce, vampire. All your lives are forfeit."

"We never lied to you," Angel told him. "We promised we'd help you get your vengeance, and we have."

Gregor's mouth twisted in scorn. "Our vengeance demands suffering."

"Look at him!" Cordelia exclaimed, pointing to where Angelus was crouching behind her. "Isn't that enough suffering for you?"

Gregor glanced at Angelus, then shifted his gaze to Angel. "He may suffer now, but it will not always be so. This one is the proof of that."

"I have the soul you cursed me with," Angel said. "That's what you've wanted all along."

"No. We want you to know pain. Your soul is only the means to that end. If you have come to treasure your soul, it can only be because it has brought you comfort. We could have killed you the night we cursed you. We let you live only so you could suffer while generations of our clan rise from the earth and fall back into it. If there is a time when your soul no longer causes you to suffer, whether that is a hundred, a thousand or ten thousand years from now, then our vengeance is ended and you must die."

"Man," Gunn said in a low voice. "These folks really know how to hold a grudge, don't they?"

"Look at you," Gregor said. "Look at these others who surround you. Foolish people to be your friends, a foolish woman who loved you. You do not stand before us in shame. You act as though you have a right to make demands of us, a right to be whatever you wish. That is the right of anyone else with a soul, but not you, Angelus. Never you."

"I understand that," Angel said, feeling his hands clench into fists. "I understand that better than you could ever possibly imagine."

The gypsy laughed at him. "You stand here with your friends, and you want me to believe that you suffer? You want us to believe that you feel pain? You know nothing of it anymore."

The others in the attack party all shifted on their feet, began gripping their weapons more tightly. They were losing their awe of Cordelia and their terror of the fire, and their rage was beginning to well up within them again. In a few moments, Angel realized, the situation would escalate into battle. Could all four of them get out of this?

No, he thought. All five of us.

Angel looked back to where Angelus huddled at the back of the cave and suddenly experienced a stab of sympathy for him -- the first time he'd felt anything beyond contempt for his former self. In 1898 he'd already been older than the oldest human, had traveled continents and considered himself a man of wide experience. And yet he'd known nothing of what made human lives real -- not love or friendship or sorrow or grief. For the Angelus of 1898, all that still lay ahead; right now, his 150-year-old past self was like an infant whose life had only just begun. The future was before him, an unexplored country wide open with possibility.

At this moment, his past self had everything that Angel had wanted for Connor. Everything Connor would now never have.

Angel said, "I had a son, and he died."

The cave was quiet. Gregor stared at him -- no, Angel thought, Gia's father stared at him. He tried to imagine Gia as a little girl, swaddled up in this man's arms, then remembered her as the broken corpse that he had created and Darla had casually discarded. He wondered if Gregor was trying to imagine Connor, knew the man could never grasp the uniqueness and joy of his son -- just as Angel would never truly know the woman he had destroyed.

Their eyes met. Gregor took a deep breath, and Angel realized -- one father knew another.

At last, Gregor said, "Then you will know enough suffering for our vengeance. And more even than that, vampire. You understand this?"

Angel nodded. Gregor lifted his hand, and the massed ranks behind him began to file out of the cave. Angel watched them go without really seeing them, knew Cordelia had placed her hand comfortingly on his shoulder without his really feeling it.

"I had a son," he said again. "I understand now."