"Angel?"

He blinked as the world around him turned from gold to gray to - the hallways of Wolfram & Hart. Fred stood next to him, squinting at him over the lenses of her glasses.

"Angel, are you listening? You seemed to kind of fugue out there."

"Fred." It was her - really her - not Illyria in her body, using her, but Fred Burkle herself, alive and well. "Fred, you're all right. You're -" Then words failed him, and Angel wrapped her in his embrace, shutting his eyes to savor the moment. Had he ever hugged Fred? Yes, but not enough. Definitely not enough.

Her skinny arms slid around his waist, somewhat awkwardly. "Uh, Angel? Are you okay?"

"I'm great," he said. "It's been a long time since I was this good."

"This is really sweet and all, but - you know I only think of you as a friend, right?"

"Absolutely. Friends." Angel pulled away and cupped her face in his hands. Fred was obviously still puzzled, but she smiled at him, the sweet little crooked grin he'd never thought he'd see again. "You - what were you saying?"

"That we have a lot of adjustments to make, if we're going to be here every day." She began walking down the hallway again, clearly uncertain whether Angel would follow. He did, but already he was calming down. A quick check of his jacket pockets revealed the device, heavy and still, right next to his Wolfram & Hart ID. Fred kept talking, bubbling on, giving him a sense of time. "We're used to just talking to each other whenever we bump into each other, which is pretty much constantly, or was, back when we were in the Hyperion. But now - we could walk around for WEEKS without bumping into each other. So we should set up, say, maybe a regular meeting time. Every day, or at least every week, to make sure we're all on the same page."

"That's a good idea," Angel said carefully. "After all, we've been with Wolfram & Hart for - how long is it now?"

"Two weeks," Fred replied. "Two weeks and a day. And four hours. If we're being exact."

"Exact is perfect. You're perfect." Of course she would be exact; it was the physicist in her, and how had he not realized he even missed the physicist in her? Angel might have hugged her again, if two people hadn't come around the corner to join them. He could feel the grin spreading over his face as he said, "I can't believe it's you."

Wesley half-turned, as if expecting someone else to be standing behind him and Gunn. "Why wouldn't it be -" The words were cut off as Angel embraced Wesley as well, weak with gratitude for his friends' survival.

Behind him, he could hear Fred saying, "Angel seems to be in a huggy mood."

"Since when does Angel have huggy moods?" Gunn demanded.

"Sorry. I'm sorry. I just -" Angel pulled away from Wesley, who wasn't bothering to hide his surprise. There was a hint of a smile on Wes' face, though, and it was good to see. "I'm just glad to see you guys. That's all."

Gunn folded his arms. "I don't get a hug?"

As far as Angel knew, Gunn hadn't died - but the fact that he wasn't feeling the rush of oh-my-God relief for Gunn that he did for Wes and Fred didn't make him any less pleased. "Would you like a hug?"

"Hell, no. Are you possessed or something?"

"No. Just overwhelmed." Angel started pulling himself together, adjusting to the shift, finding his footing. "Two weeks, one day and four hours since we took Wolfram & Hart's bargain, right?"

"Right," Wesley said. He cocked his head. "Why is this important?"

Angel began to answer, then remembered where they were: Wolfram & Hart, evil to the core, laced with every kind of magical and nonmagical eavesdropping device possible. "Let's not talk about it here."

"Here as in the hallway?" Fred said.

"Here as in Wolfram & Hart."

Gunn frowned. "It's afternoon - you remember afternoon, right? The light outside these windows ain't so kind to you when you're on the other side of the glass."

"I'm not likely to forget that," Angel said. "But we can get to the sewers from here."

"Sewers?" Fred wrinkled her nose. "See, not dealing with sewers again was one of the definite pluses of this deal."

"I agree," Wesley said, "though if it's necessary --"

"It is," Angel said. He didn't want to make a scene that might alert Wolfram & Hart's goons to his plan, but he needed his friends to follow.

Perhaps Wesley saw that in his eyes, because he nodded slowly. "Right. The sewers. Let's go."

"The sewers," Gunn chuckled. "We're kickin' it old-school."

Fred sighed. "Wait while I change my shoes."

**

"You want to walk out of Wolfram & Hart." Wesley leaned forward, intent on Angel's words. "Walk away from the deal we've made."

"I don't think we have any other choice," Angel said.

For a few moments, they were all quiet; the only sound was the dripping of water into puddles and the occasional clank of a thumping pipe. Angel's sharp ears could hear a scurrying rat in a faraway corner, which reminded him that he was hungry. But he was trying to be persuasive now, and drinking rats would probably work against that.

"If we could handle it - the temptations, the problems -" Fred made a small gesture, as if grabbing at something that wasn't there. "The possibilities for the good we could do are endless."

"We can't handle it," Angel said. "The very fact that we thought we could should tell us that we're living in a dream world about this. Wolfram & Hart - we're not dealing with the lawyers in the suits. Those guys, yeah, we could handle them. But behind this place is real, primordial evil. Stuff that exists on a scale we can't contend with. If we were perfect - maybe then we could walk through these halls without becoming tainted. We aren't perfect. Me least of all."

They didn't argue this point. All of them were deep in thought, obviously making their own judgments, reconsidering the decisions they had made. It was Wesley who spoke first: "Your concerns can't be rejected. We all had them, and we all disregarded them - but that doesn't mean we can't or shouldn't reconsider."

"It's not that easy, though," Gunn said. "Can we back out now, even if we want to?"

"There's a trial period in the contract," Angel replied "Thirty days -- boilerplate language. Lilah joked about it." Wesley flinched at bit at the name Lilah, and Angel realized he shouldn't have said it; the scars were still too raw.

But that concern was wiped away by what Gunn said next. "I don't mean, can we get out of the contract. I mean - Wolfram & Hart is taking care of Cordelia. That's part of the package."

Cordelia. She was upstairs - alive, but not alive. Cordy, but not Cordy. Angel felt a sick lurch deep in his belly, regret and sorrow and anger at Chip. If he could only have turned the device back just a bit further -

Quietly, he said, "Cordelia's dead. Not her body but - her mind, her soul, what we think of as being her. You guys know that, right?"

They all stared at him in silence. Gunn dropped his eyes, as if unable to meet Angel's gaze any longer. Wesley replied, "I had thought you would be the last of us to give up. Not the first."

"It's not giving up," Angel said. "It's - letting her go to something so much better than this. She deserves that. Not being tied up in wires and machines while we - pretend."

A tear trickled down Fred's cheek as she gripped Wesley's arm; Wes responded by covering her hand with his own. Angel gave them all a moment to consider.

But in that silence, it occurred to him that there had been one more "signing bonus" for the Wolfram & Hart contract: the forgetfulness spell. The one that hid the knowledge of Connor - everything he had done, everything he had been - from all the others, and most importantly, from Connor himself. Would they undo that spell also?

The time had come when Connor was ready for some of the knowledge - but it hadn't come yet. Distance had never muted Angel's horror and misery at the sight of his son in suicidal anguish, ready to obliterate his life and those of innocents just to score the world with one more black, ugly mark - to remind them that he was there.

Still - Fred was alive. Wesley was alive. If breaking with Wolfram & Hart now could save them, then it was worth the risk. Angel told himself he could save his son again, no matter what the cost. He could, and he would.

"Are you sure about this, Angel?" Fred looked up into his eyes. He could hear her heart beating, and he'd never known it was such a beautiful sound.

"Yes, I'm sure."

Gunn crammed his fists into his pockets. "And we're just gonna let them flip the switch on Cordy?"

Angel considered that, then steeled himself. "I'll take care of it."

**

"You are her legal guardian," the doctor said, frowning at the chart. "Seeing as how her parents are beyond even the Firm's reach. So you're within your rights to switch the machines off. Before you make a hasty decision, though -"

"It's not hasty," Angel said. The contract had not yet been broken; Wes, Fred and Gunn had all agreed that Cordelia should be decently seen to before they made their effort to escape Wolfram & Hart's clutches. Therefore it was important to make this seem like an isolated choice, something that wouldn't affect the contract. "We've all talked about it. Slept on it. Even when we signed up to work here, we knew we'd probably take this step."

"Very well." The doctor shut Cordelia's chart and took a deep breath. "We can do this whenever you'd like -"

"Now." It felt as though an iron bar was pressing on his chest, but Angel kept his voice firm. "We should do this now."

"Would your friends like to visit her one last time?"

"I asked them to let me come alone."

The doctor patted his shoulder once, then drew back the hand, as if regretting it. "She'll probably breathe on her own for a while - maybe even a few hours. Will you want to stay with her?"

Angel nodded, wordless. He knew this was the right decision - knew it past any shadow of a doubt - but now that the moment had come, it was harder than he'd thought.

He followed the doctor into Cordelia's room; she lay on a flat bed in the center, the lights and machines all circled around her like attendants. Angel had come to this room before, but the sight never stopped hurting. So much seemed normal - her beautiful face, her long-fingered hands, even the flush of her lips. It was as though, at any moment, she might sit up and raise an eyebrow. What are you doing here? she'd say. Don't you have an elsewhere to be?

But so much was wrong, too. Her breasts were too full, still swollen with milk for the child she'd never fed - the child who had devoured her. The rise and fall of her chest was too deep and too regular. And of course, she was silent - Cordelia, who was never silent.

The wrongness of keeping Cordelia's body alive had never been as agonizing as it was right now, when Angel was ready to end it.

The doctor seemed to take a long time about it; it wasn't just a switch to flip. But one by one, the machines around Cordelia went quiet and dark, dimming the light surrounding her more and more. As they ceased to hum, the room became ever more quiet, until only the mechanical shhh-thk of the ventilator remained.

At last, the doctor made one more move, and the ventilator went silent. Cordelia still breathed; her heart kept beating. Angel watched her face as the doctor peeled away strips of tape and pulled out the plastic breathing tube. No expression, no movement, no sign.

Angel hadn't realized until now that he still wanted to save her - that part of him still thought it was possible. If he hadn't known beyond any doubt that she would die, he could never have borne this. But he wasn't positive he could bear it now.

"I'll leave you alone," the doctor said, backing out the door.

Cordelia breathed in and out, the tempo just the same as it had been when the machine was on. But her breaths were more shallow now.

He took her hand in his; her skin was soft, even softer than it had been before. Maybe the nurses had rubbed her hands with lotion. At this moment, even that small kindness seemed worth the price of paying Wolfram & Hart in blood.

"We've done this before," Angel said. His voice echoed slightly in the absolute silence of the room. "You in the hospital bed, me here holding your hand. I never knew - I never asked if you could remember that. But I never forgot it."

Her hand seemed so warm - but it wasn't as warm as it ought to have been. It was only in comparison to his dead flesh that Cordelia still seemed alive.

"I told you then that I wanted you back. And then I corrected myself - told the truth, for first time between us. The last time too, I guess. I told you that I needed you back. And I do need you, Cordelia. I never stopped. I've only needed you more."

Her breath caught in her throat - only for a moment, but her breathing was slowing now. Angel's vision blurred with tears, cold lines making their way down his cheeks. Did humans understand that you could even miss the warmth of your own tears?

"I lost you a lot of times, in a lot of ways. Almost all of them were my fault." Angel held her hand to his unbeating heart; her pulse, weak and thready, was the only life between them. "But I never stopped needing you, and I never will."

Now her heartbeat was irregular. Angel remembered that sound, that stop-and-start flutter, from a thousand murders in alleyways; it was the sound of a heart ceasing to beat for the last time. His hand tightened around hers, as though he could hold her there by sheer force of will.

Could she hear him? At all? Hearing was the last sense to go - he knew that, too, and if anything of Cordelia's soul remained to witness, Angel wanted her to hear the words he'd been too afraid to say aloud before, the words he hadn't wanted to admit even to himself. "Cordelia, I love you."

Her heart stopped. Her chest rose and fell once more - then was still. Cordelia didn't struggle; her beautiful face didn't even move. Cordelia was gone forever. Angel stood beside a shell.

Maybe it had been selfish, to ask Wes and Fred and Gunn not to attend, but Angel could not regret it. Only alone could he have said those words to her; only alone could he rest his head against her shoulder, the fading heat of her body soaking into his skin, and give in to his grief.

**

"We should have a funeral service," Wesley said. "Something after the cremation - perhaps she would've liked her ashes to be scattered at sea."

"You said that already," Angel replied, trying to keep the irritation from his voice. The previous 24 hours had been an ordeal that even Wesley and Fred's presence couldn't entirely heal. Cordelia's death had been the worst but only the first blow; quitting Wolfram & Hart had only been easier by comparison.

Lilah had reappeared from her grave, hand at her throat, to castigate them all; Wesley's eyes had taken on a hollow look, as though something had ripped from him. Threats had been levied. Lorne had pointed out, repeatedly and at far too much length, that he was willing to walk into battle and die with them but wasn't really keen on a lawsuit. The firm had even threatened not to turn over Cordelia's body, which was when Angel had put on his game face and made it clear that, in his opinion, Angelus' sins could possibly be enlisted in the service of a good cause.

Now they had a body in the morgue, a dusty Hyperion still littered with debris from Jasmine's followers, and no plan on what the hell to do next. Angel knew they needed another direction - he was sure he could think of one - but with Cordelia's death heavy on his heart, it was hard to focus.

"I called Sunnydale," Wesley said. "I thought that perhaps Giles and Willow and - well, and Buffy, if it wouldn't be difficult for you - that they would like to attend a short memorial. But apparently all lines are down. I do hope it's not another apocalypse."

"I haven't been to a funeral since my own," Angel said. The thought of saying goodbye to Cordelia again was too difficult to bear. "There's no rush. We can keep the ashes for a while until we decide what to do."

Wesley opened his mouth as if to argue, but he finally sighed. "I suppose we have nothing but time."

"Where's Gunn, anyway?" Angel stood up from behind his desk and began pacing; he was ready to start the day, even if he had no idea what the day would bring. "Fred should've been downstairs a while ago."

"Yesterday was difficult," Wesley replied. "Give them time."

Angel put his hands against the wall, working to steady himself. He knew the true source of his restlessness, and it wasn't grief. It was - uncertainty. At last he said, "If I took a - well, a side trip - you'd handle things here."

"Of course." Wesley cocked his head. "Are you certain you're all right?"

"I will be," Angel said, hoping it was true. And it would be true, once he had learned to live with Cordelia's loss -

--and once he knew that Connor was truly all right.

**

He'd had no idea a limo with tinted windows cost so much. Maybe Wolfram & Hart would send him the bill for the first trip, now that he'd backed out of working for the firm.

Angel had only traveled this way once, and yet it felt to him as though he knew it by heart; the turning of the country road, the height of the pines, the fresh, cool scent in the air. The day was cloudy and the ground near the house well-shaded by tall trees, so Angel could simply throw his coat over his head and run toward the house.

Here, not long ago in this time, he had listened to Connor bragging about his SAT scores to a family that loved him. Angel had since had the opportunity to meet the strong, happy young man who believed he'd grown up in that family, and his gratitude had eclipsed his loss. When he'd given notice to Wolfram & Hart, Angel's greatest fear had been that they would undo the spell that rewrote everyone's memories; instead, no mention had been made of it, and Wesley, Fred and Gunn had made no mention of Connor or any of the events surrounding his brief, eventful time with them.

It makes sense, Angel reasoned as he crept through the shadows closer to the house. Rewriting Connor's memories isn't just a benefit to Connor, or to me; Wolfram & Hart doesn't want the Destroyer on the loose, either. Especially not if they want to loose Sahjahn on the world once more -

--Connor still had to destroy Sahjahn, of course, but that would take care of itself, just as it had before -

--so Connor was safe.

No sooner had the thought taken shape in Angel's mind than he smelled blood.

Human blood, thick and rich, awakening hunger even before horror. But the horror came too.

"No," Angel whispered, quickening his steps, ignoring the flash of heat and pain across his fingers as he dashed through small patches of sunlight. So much blood - too much, more than one person could lose and live - more than two or three people could lose and live -

He smashed through the door, hearing the lock shatter as he stumbled into the kitchen. His boots slipped in blood.

Lying on the floor were two girls, younger even than Connor himself - his sisters, or the girls he had believed to be his sisters. A slender hand was splayed on the tile next to Angel's foot, each nail painted glittery pink, a friendship bracelet braided around the wrist. Each of the girls had had her throat cut, along the carotid artery from the bright scent of it. But that darker, mustier scent, the one that hovered along the back of Angel's tongue - that was blood from the abdomen. Which meant that somewhere else in the house, someone else -

"You."

Angel turned to see Connor standing in the hallway. He was wearing pajamas; his face was stained with blood, but the pajamas were clean. Apparently Connor had had time afterward to change and take a nap.

"Connor," Angel whispered. "Why did you do this?"

"They kept saying they were my family." Connor's face wasn't contorted with rage, the way it so often had been when he looked at his father; instead, there was only confusion. "And they were my family - but they weren't. I had other memories. I had dreams. You were in some of them." Connor walked forward, just a couple of halting, uneasy steps. "Please tell me - who are you?"

"You don't know me. Oh, my God." He had calculated what would happen if Connor remembered himself; he had never considered what would happen if Connor remembered nothing at all. "The dreams - when I'm in your dreams - what happens?"

Connor shook his head and laughed, as though he were a little bit embarrassed. "It's weird. You know how, sometimes, you can remember a dream when you first wake up, but later in the day it's just - gone? I know that I dreamed you but - maybe there was something with water? I don't know. It's crazy." Then he frowned, disquieted once more. "Maybe I'm dreaming right now. Because something seems - wrong."

Angel held out a hand. "Connor, I know you're confused right now. But I want you to come with me. I want you to trust me."

"Why?"

The one reason he had was the best in the world - but it still hurt to know that he only had one. "Because I love you."

Connor looked more bemused than anything else. "It really seems like I ought to know you."

**

Angel was able to convince Connor to wash up and change clothes again, so the limo driver wouldn't be tipped off that anything was wrong. Of course, there were probably fingerprints in the house, and other kinds of evidence - assuming that the records in the home showed any proof that Connor had ever lived there or been a part of that family.

Never mind that. They would cross that bridge when they got to it. Right now, the most important thing was getting Connor back to the Hyperion safely.

As the limo dropped them off and Angel angled his coat above his head, he knew a moment of trepidation. The memory spell had failed to work on Connor, erasing his entire memory. Wesley and the others had been fine when he'd left, though. So was the spell still intact for them? Or had the illusion simply shattered, leaving them with their true memories of what had gone before? If so, Wesley would probably be unhappy.

Well, Angel had gotten used to Wesley being unhappy. It never prevented them from working together in a crisis, and it wouldn't now.

"Wes?" he called as he steered Connor into the lobby; his son ambled along at his side, passive in his bewilderment. "Fred?"

"Ah, there you are." Wesley strolled out from the office, and he smiled politely at Connor. "Is this a new client?"

Spell still intact for them, then. "Kinda, yeah. I think Wolfram & Hart might have erased his memory. Most of his memory, anyway."

"That's terrible." All business, Wesley touched Connor's shoulder; Connor flinched, but made no other move. "We'll do what we can. Please, sit down. We'll get you something to drink."

Connor did as he was told, but his dark eyes followed Angel intently as the two of them went back toward the office. Quietly, keeping Connor's preternatural hearing in mind, Angel murmured, "How can we find out what was done to him?"

"It's going to take some time. Memory spells are both numerous and complex." Wesley paused, then said, "Before we dig into research, I wanted to touch on a, well, difficult topic. Better it's resolved now, I think."

Compared to what they'd been through the past two days, what could be difficult? "Sure. What?"

"We should have a funeral service for Cordelia," Wesley said. "Something after the cremation - I thought we might scatter her ashes at sea." 

Wesley had said that to him this morning. No - Wesley had said that to him repeatedly this morning. Angel had thought it grief and distraction that made Wesley repeat himself, but instead - instead --

"I called Sunnydale," Wesley said. "I wanted to invite Xander and Giles and - well, and Buffy, if you think the two of you could - I'm certain you could, for Cordelia's memory. But the operators can't get through to Sunnydale."

Angel braced himself against the counter, overcome with something too scary for regret but too dismal for horror.

Wesley said, "I do hope it's not another apocalypse."

After a long moment, Angel said, "You should probably start your research now."

"Excellent idea. You can see to our client." Wesley smiled fondly, all bad blood between them worse than forgotten. "I'm going to make some tea for us. Darjeeling?"

"Great." Angel watched Wesley go, then cast another glance at the still-motionless Connor before taking the stairs to the second floor, two at a time. He looked for Fred until he saw a small shape cowering beneath one of the desks; for her, memory had rolled back to a point where she had just returned from Pylea. He could have gone in to speak to her, but already, he knew what he had to do.

Angel drew the golden device from his coat pocket and stared at it. He thought he hadn't turned the dial much- but then, who was to say that the instrument was calibrated to his own lifetime? Maybe all of eternity was wound in there, waiting to be set free.

He hadn't gone far enough, though he didn't need to go too much farther. Just a few more months - surely that would do it -

"Once more," Angel said, giving the device a small twist and feeling the world spin into nothingness  around him.

**

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