Buffy walked in through the front door and felt a sharp stabbing pain in her shin.
“ Ow!”
“ Dumbass,” said Dawn.
Buffy paused for moment. Then she looked around for Xander, who’d obviously either brought Dawn back or been forced to bring her back.
And sure enough, there he was.
“ Don’t look at me. This is a Summers thing, it’s all very violent.”
Buffy looked back at her sister who stared defiantly back, and decided that there was no way she was going to win this argument.
“ If you get killed, I’m telling.” She brushed past Dawn and into the dining room, where Giles, Willow, Xander and Anya were waiting.
“ Did you find out anything about the scythe?” asked Willow.
Buffy smiled a little smile. “It slices, dices, and makes julienne preacher.”
“ Caleb?”
“ I cut him in half,” Buffy said as she hefted the scythe.
“ All right!” enthused Willow.
Anya agreed. “He had that coming.”
Xander smiled. “Hey, party in my eye socket and everyone’s invited!” When everyone just stared at him, he looked a little deflated. “Sometimes I shouldn’t say words.”
“ And…” continued Buffy. “I know this whole war-with-the-First thing has got everyone a little down so, without meaning to of course, I invited a couple of old friends back home.”
As she said this there was a knock at the front door. She walked to open it and there stood Angel.
“ Come in.”
Angel stepped through the threshold of the house.
“ Angel?” said Giles with no small amount of surprise.
“ Hi.”
“ What are you doing here?”
“ Heard you could all use a bit of a hand with the whole Apocalypse that’s going down.”
Giles didn’t speak for a moment, and then nodded at the vampire. “Every little helps.”
Anya looked Angel over. “You’re as large and glowery as I remember.”
“ Thanks. I think.”
“ Good to see you again,” said Willow. Angel smiled and nodded at her.
Just then two soldiers walked in and dumped a large box in the hallway, exiting again.
“ I see you brought along some company…” said Giles. “Anyone we’d know?”
“ Just me,” said Wesley as he walked inside, dropping a heavy looking bag next to the box. He looked at each of the Scoobies. “Nice to see you all again.”
There were smiles all around. Buffy looked around and thought this was as good a morale boost that she could have thought of.
Just then, Faith walked inside. Then blinked.
“ Angel?” Angel waved. “Wes?” He smiled at her.
“ Geez, miss me already?” She brushed past them and into the living room.
Fred tumbled in, dropping a large pile of books onto the floor. Giles, in full head-librarian mode, leaped up and helped Fred gather up the books. When they had made a neat enough pile, she sprang to her feet and grinned. “Hi, I’m Fred, nice to meet ya’all!”
“ Same here.” Gunn walked through the door and deposited what was hopefully the last of any more bags. “Name’s Gunn.”
There was a voice from outside. “No-one attack me, okay?”
Lorne peeked his head around the door and Dawn gasped. Buffy leaned over to Giles. “Karaoke demon. Better spread the word there’s a demon living in the house.” Giles nodded in agreement.
There were introductions all around, and the soldiers entered and dropped two more boxes before driving away in the big vehicle.
“ Where’d they go?” Buffy asked Angel, off to one side.
“ They’ll be checking the area for any demons or vamps, assessing strategic locations, that type of thing,” he replied.
“ Very military of them.” She thought of Riley then, he would’ve understood all of this army mumbo-jumbo.
“ So what type of operation are you running here?” asked Angel, referring to Buffy’s earlier question.
She sighed. “A bunch of scared girls, terrified for their lives, two Slayers who can’t quite decide whether or not to get along, a vampire with a soul, a sarcastic ex-vengeance demon, a bricklayer, a sister who didn’t exist up until two years ago, an ex-Watcher and a witch who’s frightened to even float a pencil in case she turns homicidal and flays us all alive, all living in the same house.” She took a breath.
Angel considered that for a moment. “Add to that another vampire with a soul, another ex-Watcher, a guy who used to run a street gang, a physicist who spent five years in an alternate dimension and a karaoke demon. You think it’ll work out?”
Buffy sighed again. “I hope so.” She took another deep breath, and then looked puzzled. “Is Gunn a physicist?”

Spike was pummelling a punch bag in the basement, with the likeness of Angel stamped onto the front of it. He could still see them in that tomb, kissing, every time he closed his eyes. The rage he had felt at that moment was indescribable, and, ironically, the only thing that had kept him from leaping across the room, plunging a stake into Angel’s heart and snapping Buffy’s neck was the very thing that was trying to make him do it. The First had kept his grip on reality. If it had been manifesting as anyone else, then he probably would’ve done it. But hearing Buffy’s voice next to his ear while he was watching from across the tomb, knowing that it couldn’t be real, somehow calmed him down. He just walked away instead.
He heard footsteps walking down the stairs behind him and knew who it was before he smelled her.
“ So, where’s tall dark and forehead?”
“ Let me guess, you can smell him?”
He stepped back from the punch bag and turned to face her. “Yeah, that and I used my enhanced vampire eyeballs to watch you kissing him.”
Buffy looked awkwardly for a moment, thinking of what to say. “It…was a hello.”
“ Most people don’t use their tongues to say hello.” He thought about it. “Or I guess they do, but -”
“ There were no tongues!” Buffy exclaimed. She looked over at the punch bag and saw the stupid cartoon of Angel.
“ You know, one of these days I’m just gonna put you two in a room and let you wrestle it out.”
“ So where is he?” demanded Spike.
“… He’s upstairs.”
Spike snorted. “Brilliant. Just brilliant. Here I am workin’ myself up for the big event and Captain Forehead is upstairs makin’ himself right at home.”
“ I don’t want you two fighting, Spike. Did you really come down here to work up for that?”
“ What?”
“ You said the big event.”
He looked at her for a moment. “…The Apocalypse?”
“ Oh, right. The same still applies though. I want you fight-free.”
“ Fine. Just make sure he knows that too. I know what my priorities are. And where’s that trinket he gave to you?”
“ Oh…that.”
“ Yeah, that. I got the whole ‘I don’t want to risk you’ thing, and I’m the only other guy who can wear it.”
“ Look, I don’t know what’s going on with everyone but…I haven’t figured it all out yet. Let me get back to you.”
“ Fine. Go upstairs to your sweetie-bear, see if I care.”
Buffy was a little hurt. “Spike, I’ve had enough jealous vampire crap for one night.”
“ Oh, sorry I exist. I might as well wander outside and impale myself on a tree, that it?”
“ No, Spike, that’s not it. He came because there’s an Apocalypse, THE Apocalypse, and it’s happening as we speak! He’s here to help us and I still need you.” She didn’t know where that last bit came from but it certainly hit the spot with Spike. He suddenly looked like a weight had been lifted off his shoulders.
“ Well…if you put it like that…”
“ We all need to be together on this Spike, no matter how anyone might feel towards anyone else. Me and Angel are over. We were over a long time ago, and I don’t think either of us have any intention of getting back together.”
“ But what about what happened back at the tomb…?”
“ We’re soul mates, Spike. We still love each other, but we know we can’t go back to that place or it’d destroy both of us. It’s just that sometimes…”
“ It gets a bit intense, right?”
She nodded. “Yeah.”
He paused for a moment. “Alright, I can accept all of that.”
“ Good. I need to go upstairs and sort out some stuff, I’ll be back later and we can talk some more…?”
He smiled. “Sounds good to me.”

Wesley was on his own, shifting supplies they had brought along and making an inventory of the existing weapons, when he heard a whisper from behind him. He turned around, but couldn’t see anything. He turned back to the stockpile of weaponry.
The whisper sounded again. He whirled around, and came face to face with another figure.
“ Wesley…” it said.
“ Father…?” he whispered.
His father stood there, dressed in a business suit, frowning.
“ Wesley. Do I even have to tell you that someone of your stature shouldn’t be shifting these things? There are lesser people whose job it is to perform such tasks. Unless, of course, you’ve lowered yourself again.”
Wesley stood, too shocked to speak.
His father sighed. “I can’t believe that Wesley Wyndham-Pryce, Head Boy of the Watcher’s Academy, has been reduced to shifting…not even artefacts. Plain weaponry that any dogsbody could handle without a fear of breaking them. I want you to know, son, that I’m truly and deeply ashamed of you.”
Wesley’s cheeks burned with embarrassment and anger. Slowly, he reached forward and poked his hand at the figure’s chest and it passed through.
“ You’re not my father,” he said in a low and controlled tone.
The figure laughed. “Of course I’m not your father. Your father’s dead, Wesley!”
“ This is all old news, now if you’ll excuse me…”
He turned his back and started moving the supplies around again. Wesley’s heart ached both with resentment and grief at the loss of his father, but he wouldn’t allow this apparition a single second of knowing that it’s hurt him in the slightest.
“ I’m sorry…excuse you?” a female voice asked from behind him.
Wesley froze and closed his eyes.
“ You seem to have remembered your manners since we last spoke, I think you wanted to…uhm…let me see if I remember this correctly…condemn me to an eternity in Hell, have I got that right?”
“ I did it for you. Only you’re not real, no more real than my father a few moments ago.” He turned to face the representation of Lilah.
It smirked at him, just like Lilah would have. “Now, y’see, I’m not buying that, Wes. I think that I’m getting to you, and I’m not gonna stop until I see that I’ve done it.”
“ You might be waiting a while, ‘Lilah’.” He turned back to the various items. When he turned back, he was alone again.

Buffy walked through the door to the basement and Angel was waiting for her. She jumped.
“ Hi. How are you?” he asked.
“ Fine, you?”
“ I’m just dandy. Now, about what you said to Spike down there…”
She threw her hands up into the air in exasperation. “Is nothing sacred any more? I’ve got Spike listening to us in the tomb -”
“ He was in the tomb?” Angel asked.
Buffy kept speaking while he did. “– And you listening to me and Spike in the basement, and probably Spike listening to us from the basement!”
“ Buffy…I just wanted to say that I agree with what you said.”
She stopped her tirade. “Oh.”
“ I mean, it would destroy us, and we can’t risk that, especially not now.”
She smiled at him. “I’m glad we understand each other. Now I have to go sort out a couple of things, just find an empty space to crash for the night.”
Angel nodded and she headed away. He remained leaning against the wall, lost in his thoughts.
“ Glad you’re having so much fun without me,” said a voice from right behind him, and he jumped and spun around to face the speaker.
Connor stood there.
“ Connor!?” he asked in complete surprise.
“ Hi Dad,” said Connor.
“ Oh, God, what are you doing here?” he asked, frantic with joy and worry.
“ Well, I don’t know, since I’m not supposed to be here…”
Angel started to feel a dragging feeling on his chest.
“ Connor…I…”
“ There you go, going to apologise again. What did I tell you not to do last time we met?”
Angel now felt completely deflated. “To apologise…”
“ Trying to help me,” scoffed Connor. “Who do you think you are, wiping me from memory as though I never existed? What do you think that makes me feel like, knowing my father would rather I not existed…I guess the Father really did kill the Son after all. I’ll have to go tell Wes that he was right -”
He stopped and put a hand to his mouth. “Except…I can’t, can I? Wes won’t know because you altered his memory. What if…what if I went and told them about our little secret? What would they think of you then, Dad?” He spat out the word ‘Dad’ as though it was some poison of some kind.
Angel gazed stonily at his son. “You wouldn’t. And you know why you wouldn’t? Because you’re not Connor.”
Connor laughed. “Well done, the great Private Investigator pulls through again. What’s the matter, don’t I smell like Connor?” Angel shook his head. “Oh well. Something to work on for next time. I could’ve picked any one of your victims like last time but you’ve given me some quality ammunition with this guy here.” Connor waved a hand at himself. Then he took a step closer to Angel. “Know this, vampire. When I spill out onto the Earth I’m going to take great pleasure in finding your son and tearing him limb from limb.”
With that Connor vanished into the air.
Angel felt no remorse, only burning anger towards the thing which wore the mask of his son.
“ You’d better hope you don’t become corporeal…because if you do…I’m going to make you bleed and hurt beyond anything even you can conceive of.”
With that he walked on.

“I don’t know why you let me go…”
Wesley spun around, once again greeted by the face of Lilah.
“ It’s not like I deserved what happened to me…you know I think I blame what happened to me on you.”
Wesley sighed, set his teeth, and returned to work. He was in one of the bedrooms, stripping down weapons, cleaning and re-assembling them.
“ I think, and this is just my personal opinion of course, that it was because of what happened between us that I got sent to Hell. In my line of work, you have to unequivocally go at your work without a moral fibre in your soul, and then – only then – will you succeed. No compromises, no sympathy, no mercy. Now, the problem with falling in love with someone is that those priorities start to get mixed up. Maybe the Beast wouldn’t have gutted me if I’d have been focusing on that situation rather than our relationship. I can call it that, right? If memory serves, you signed a dollar bill to that effect.” She laughed at the memory. “The thing is, Wesley, it always comes back to you. You’re the one who disappoints your father, you’re the one who betrays his friends and you’re the one who’s always cold no matter what happens, no matter who touches you -”
“ Shut UP!” he screamed, lifting a shotgun up and blasting at the Lilah’s image.
She was of course unscathed, the shrapnel passing through her and into the wall behind. She smiled at him.
“ Gotcha.” Lilah faded to nothing as people started to run into the room, wondering what all the commotion was about.
Giles burst into the room. “What’s going on?”
Wesley looked distraught as the room kept filling with potentials, Scoobies and his friends from L.A., embarrassed that he’d lost it so easily.
Giles could obviously see something bad had happened and ushered people outside.
Wesley sat down on the bed, and put his head between his hands.
“ Rough night?” a voice asked from behind him.
“ You could say that.”
Faith sat down on the bed next to him. “Happened to me the other night, too.” She looked behind her at the devastated wall. “Didn’t have one of those things handy to unload with though.”
“ I regret doing that.”
“ Don’t be. No harm done. Well, except to the wall, obviously, but it’s like you were telling me when we were hunting Angelus…you’ll need it to take it down when the big battle comes.”
Wesley let a small sigh of tired amusement escape from his nostrils. “I’m glad something I’ve said has sunken in.”
“ What can I say? I’m a slow learner. Now get some sleep. We can finish this off tomorrow.”
Wesley nodded, and Faith touched his shoulder before leaving him alone with his thoughts.


*****
I was about to switch scenes and I realised I’m getting on a bit for this chapter…also, it’s pretty late. So, I guess I’ll leave it here. Review please! And in case anyone’s wondering, we’re still in the same night Angel gives Buffy the amulet in ‘Chosen’, so we have the day after and then the following morning, which is when they go down into the Hellmouth, to get through. And I’m still using buffyworld.com’s transcript of Chosen, so thanks for that :). I’m also pretty tired when I type the chapters usually so if you see something that you think’s out of character or you spot a plothole just email me and ill change it. Anyway, long end summary here ending.