"Underneath"
At W&H, Angel is sitting alone at the head of the conference table, drumming his fingers against it. He impatiently straightens some papers then hits the intercom and calls for Harmony. She answers, "I know! I called everyone, they're just --"
Angel interrupts her, "Not here. I can see that. If they were here, I wouldn't be alone. Why am I alone?"
He looks up to see Harm has entered the office, "Well, you can be super grouchy."
He flips off the intercom, "The meeting?"
Harm tells him everybody is busy, "Wes is stuck baby-sitting Miss 'I used to rule the world, bow down before me, minion scum.' Why are we not killing her again?"
Angel asks, "Gunn?"
Harm considers that and reckons it might work if they had one that was big enough.
An irritated Angel asks, "Where is Gunn?"
She reminds him Gunn is still in the W&H medical unit, "You know, from when Wesley --" She makes a crunching noise as she mimes a stabbing motion. She adds, "And Lorne's kind of M.I.A. since --"
Angel knows the answer, "Fred."
Harm nods. She waits briefly, then breaks the silence, "Okey dokey, then." She leaves the office as Spike comes in.
Spike asks Angel where everyone else is.
Angel answers, "Apparently not coming."
Spike thought this meeting was important.
Angel is relieved, thinking Spike gets it, "At least somebody --"
Spike raises a briefcase and sets in on the table, "My first official parley as a very loosely affiliated member of ... What are we?" He mutters as he snaps open the locks on the briefcase, "Tell me we're not Scoobies."
Angel starts to answer, "We don't have a --"
Spike is glad to hear it, "A name? Well, that's probably for the best. You'd wanna be 'Angel's Avengers' or something."
Angel scoffs, "Angel's Avengers, that's --" He thinks on it moment, rather liking the sound of it after all.
Spike asks what's on the agenda as he removes something from his briefcase and lowers the lid.
Angel looks over the papers on the table, saying he has assignments for people. His explanation is interrupted by the sound of a can's tab being popped. He looks up at Spike who innocently asks, "What? I'm listening." He raises the can from his lap to his lips, "With beer."
Angel is irritated, "Forget it. You know what? This isn't a meeting. This is you, being annoying." He gets up from the table, sighs heavily and walks over to the window.
Spike retrieves one of the sheets of paper from the table, "Hey, bullet points! Classy." He looks over the paper, "Why am I always reconnaissance? I should get a decently flash gig like, 'save the girl' or 'steal the emerald with the girl.'"
Angel turns away from the window and recalls quietly, "Handsome man saved me from the monsters."
Spike asks what he's talking about.
Angel answers, "That's the first thing Fred said to me. In Pylea." He walks across the conference room as he relates the tale, "She was trapped, hiding, afraid. Nearly crazy. Crazy, but brave. I should never have let her come here. Bad things always happen here. "
Spike offers, "Hate to break it to ya mate, but bad things always happen everywhere. Besides, she wanted to be here. It was her choice."
Angel wonders, "Was it?"
Spike doesn't like what he's hearing as he gets to his feet, "Bugger. You're fixing to do something stupid, aren't you?"
Angel admits, "Done it. Came here. Spend every day lying to myself about making the world a better place."
Spike welcomes him to the planet, "We all paint on our happy faces every day when all we really want is to pound the neighbor's missis, steal his Ben Franklins. While we're at it not think about the third of the world that's starving to death." He walks over to the window and looks out.
Angel has his hands resting on the conference table top as he leans over it, "I'm not saying that I can fix everything. I just .. I .. I have to do better. The Senior Partners have a plan."
Spike scoffs, "Yeah, the prophecy. That ever lovin' apocalypse you keep going on about."
A frustrated Angel wonders which apocalypse, "The one last year or the year before that?" He knows the Senior Partners are up to something and he doesn't intend to wait to be surprised with it. He doesn't want to be in the dark anymore.
Spike agrees with that, "Might be easier if we knew anyone who had a direct line to the big guys."
Angel and Spike are confronting Eve at Lindsey's, where she's still hiding out, concealed from the Partners by the symbols covering the walls. She refuses to help.
Angel points out he wasn't entering into a negotiation with her.
Eve isn't impressed, she wonders what more he could do to her, "I've been trapped in this house for weeks like a --"
Spike offers some choices, "Rat? Snake? Beady little rat snake?"
Angel notes she's hiding, not trapped. He reckons she knows the minute she steps outside of the place, the second the symbols on the walls are no longer concealing her whereabouts from the Partners, they'll find her. He suggests she not bother looking for pity, "The only thing you care about is saving your own ass."
Eve informs him the only thing she cared about is gone, Angel let the Partners take him.
Angel suggests he could easily betray her whereabouts and the specifics of her security system to the Partners as well.
An unsure Eve says, "You wouldn't --"
Angel offers to keep quiet if she tells him what he wants to know. Their conversation is interrupted by a forceful tremor that shakes the building.
Eve accuses Angel, "Oh, you bastard! You told them! You --"
Angel assures her it wasn't him as he and Spike look around nervously.
Eve looks toward the door as sounds of items crashing and glass shattering get louder, "Oh, God. They're coming!" She pleads with Angel, "Please, don't let them take me! Angel, please! I'll tell you! I'll tell you anything you want!" Angel looks toward the door as the doorknob is rattled from the outside.
The door is thrown open. A tall, imposing figure of a man in a finely tailored suit strides in, only to find the room empty. He looks toward the open window.
A sullen Lorne is sitting at a bar as the demon bartender sings for him, badly but with enthusiasm. He finishes, waiting for Lorne to say something. When he doesn't, the bartender reckons his girlfriend is going to say no. He figures he should have bought a bigger ring.
Lorne tells him the wedding will be in June and it's going to rain, so he should bring a tent.
The bartender smiles, "She's going to say yes?"
Lorne confirms it then pushes his glass forward for a refill, "More sea, less breeze, huh?"
The bartender refills the glass, "From now on, your money's no good here." He wonders what Lorne thinks about the possibility of his having a son.
Lorne answers, "What do I think? I think I'm tired. I think I'm sick and tired of wearing bells on my toes and making like everything's gonna be okay. I think it's pathetic that lately I'm too scared and sad to tell people the truth so I just say what they want to hear instead. Most of all, I think the term 'Happy Hour' should be banned from the English language. There's nothing happy about this hour or any other. What I know is, I started drinking the moment I found out a girl I loved was gonna die. Every time I get to the bottom of the glass, I hope that last drop is gonna take me the distance." He takes a drink.
The bartender doesn't know what to say, "Okay."
Lorne continues, "A simple plan that failed utterly. Which is why I'm going to heave my tuchis off this stool, strap the bells on, and with a smile and a quip, go back into the belly of a very ugly beast and pretend like I can help." He looks up at the bartender as he pushes the empty glass away, "Cause that's what the green guy does." He gets up and departs.
Angel, Spike and Eve exit the elevator into the upper floor lobby of W&H. Angel calls to Harm who steps out from behind her desk and joins them as they walk down the hall. He directs her to put security on alert, make sure nobody gets into the building without clearance from him. He wants a guard positioned at every possible entrance.
Harm starts to point out this plan never works.
Angel sternly says her name.
She agrees to get on it as she peels off from the others.
Angel tells Spike to stay with Eve and kill anything that gets past security.
Spike asks where Angel is going.
Angel answers, "To see my lawyer."
Angel pays a call on Gunn who is still in a bed in the W&H medical unit, "We have a problem. The Senior Partners found Eve. They sent something to take her out. I need to know if I have jurisdiction to protect her. What's protocol here?"
Gunn closes the magazine he's been reading, "I don't know."
Angel walks over to the bed and takes the magazine from him, "Right. Well, when you're through reading about important things like, um, 'Trista and Ryan's big baby plans', maybe you can put some thought into it." He sets the magazine aside.
Gunn isn't sure.
Angel reminds him, "You paid a high price for what's in that brain. So use it."
Gunn tells him there's a provision in his contract that allows a CEO of W&H to invoke an order, allowing him to take custody of a "wayward employee." He notes it's not usually used for protection, but it should suffice.
Angel asks what he needs to do.
Gunn offers to make a call.
Angel starts to leave. He stops at the door and turns back, "Listen, Gunn. I know you feel bad about your part in what happened to Fred, and you should. For the rest of your life it should wake you up in the middle of the night. And it will, because you're a good man. You signed a piece of paper, that's all."
Gunn admits he knew, "Not about Fred but when I signed I knew there would be consequences."
Angel understands, "You know, the thing about atonement is, you never run out of chances. But you gotta take 'em. You can't hide in some hospital room and pretend it's all gonna go away. 'Cause it never will."
Wes is dreaming of himself sitting in a chair as Fred comes up behind him, "You have a visitor."
Wes sullenly answers, "I thought I was in isolation."
Fred kisses him on the cheek, "Whose fault is that?" She moves around to the front of him and kneels. She smiles, "Tell me a joke?"
Wes obliges, "Two men walk into a bar. The first man orders a Scotch and soda. The second man remembers something he'd forgotten, and it doubles him over with pain. He falls to the floor, shaking, and then through the floor and into the earth. He looks back up at the first man, but he doesn't call out to him. They're not that close."
Fred looks up at him, "Yeah, you always know where you are."
Wes says it's his "particular skill."
Fred sits on his lap, "This is only the first layer. Don't you wanna see how deep I go?"
Wes wakes from his dream. He's sitting in a chair at Fred's, Illyria is also there. She notes he's been sitting for a long while.
He says he fell asleep.
She says he "drank a great deal of that poison." As Wes rubs his eyes, she continues, "You called me a lot of names meant to hurt feelings I no longer have. And then you sat there for hours making noise with your nose."
Wes tells her, "I was dreaming, you twit."
Illyria notes he said "her" name, Fred.
Wes says he was having a nightmare. He takes another drink, "I don't suppose you have nightmares, or sleep, or any of that human crap."
She answers, "In my time, nightmares walked among us. Walked and danced. Skewering victims in plain sight, laying their fears and worst desires out for everyone to see. This ... to make us laugh."
Wes offers a sarcastic, "I'll bet you were jolly as frat boys."
Illyria doesn't seem to pay him any heed, "And now nightmares are trapped inside the heads of humans. Pitiful echoes of themselves. I wonder whom they angered so to merit such a fate." She looks around the room, becoming more agitated.
Wes reckons she must find this world terribly disappointing.
She admits that.
Wes concedes he's not all that fond of it himself as he takes another drink.
Illyria walks briskly toward him, "Why don't you leave?"
Eve and Spike are in Angel's office. She derisively notes it was a brilliant plan to bring her there, the Senior Partners will never think to look for her at W&H. She figures she's going to die.
An annoyed Spike tells her she's making it hard for him to want to help her out.
Angel comes in, having heard Spike's comment. He says they don't want to help her, but they will. He tells her she's under his protection.
Eve is grateful for that.
Angel lets her know he can take it away with one phone call. He wants some answers from her starting with who she is and what she does for the Partners.
Eve sits down and answers, telling him she's a liaison, "I liaise."
Angel and Spike both stand in front of her, looking incredulous and threatening.
Eve gets back up, asking what they want her to say, "I'm a leprechaun. I'm from Brigadoon."
Spike's heard that one before.
Eve answers, "There are layers upon layers at Wolfram and Hart, Angel. Things you'll never understand. What am I? I'm a child of the Senior Partners. Created to do their bidding."
Angel reckons she's saying she's an" immortal." He asks why she's there.
She tells him she watches, she tells the Partners what she sees, she passes messages to him if there are any.
Angel wants to know what the Partners are.
Eve claims ignorance, "Do you honestly believe that the Senior Partners would let me have access to that information? Angel, for someone so old, you're so young. I only know what they want me to know and only when they want me to know it." She concedes she might know something, perhaps a lot, but she doesn't have access to it, "It's locked in my head somewhere and I don't have the key."
Spike and Angel are both frustrated with the conversation going in circles.
Eve offers the irony, "There was someone who could've told you everything you want to know and you let the Senior Partners take him away. Lindsey's dedicated years of his life to the study of the Senior Partners. No one knows more about them than he does. What they've done, what they plan to do."
Angel thought Lindsey was after him, "You're saying bringing Spike back, the fail-safe ("You're Welcome") ... that was all about the Senior Partners?"
Eve concedes it was about Angel as well, "He really doesn't like you. He may know more about you then you do."
Angel reckons that's why the Partners took Lindsey.
Spike agrees, they couldn't risk Lindsey and Angel having a chat.
Eve ponders, "And now .. what he's going through."
Angel asks if the Partners didn't kill him.
Eve is sure they wouldn't, "They'd want him to suffer horrors. Lindsey is in some hideous, awful hell."
Lindsey is in bed with an attractive blond woman, kissing her. They're both wearing wedding rings. He greets her as he smiles, "Good morning."
She agrees it has been so far.
A young boy comes into the room and flops down onto the bed between them, "Stop it! That's how I get sisters."
Lindsey teases him then looks at his 'wife' and smiles, "So, what are we going to do today?"
A perfect, happy family tableau.
Lindsey steps outside his house, happy music plays. He smiles as he strolls to the front walk to retrieve the newspaper. The suburban neighborhood is made up of a tract of nice, upper scale houses, all looking the same.
As Lindsey walks to the sidewalk, the men of the other houses also walk out to pick up their newspapers, all synchronized perfectly in their movements and actions. They pick up the papers, stand and wave to their neighbors across the street, turn and head back to their houses.
Lindsey stops to pick up his son's skateboard, then peruses the paper as he goes back inside.
Angel is sitting behind the desk in his office. Eve, Lorne and Spike are also there. Spike notes "There's thousands of different kinds of hells. You got your fire hell. Your ice hell. Your ... ice hell. Your .. upside-down hell."
Angel's getting annoyed, "I don't care if he's in 'Toy Poodles On Parade' hell, he's got information that we need."
Spike isn't confident the source of that information is reliable, "According to the little girl whose only reason for being is to see her little Pookie Bear again."
Eve asks Lorne to tell them she's not lying.
Lorne confirms that, "No one can fake it through the Pina Colada song. Not once the chorus kicks in."
Angel gets to his feet, frustrated, "If Lindsey can tell me what the Senior Partners have planned, I want him." He looks at Spike, "You got a better idea how to do it, I'm totally open."
Spike raises his hands, "Didn't say that. Just pointed out, that this one sucks. We're looking for a hell dimension in a haystack. How are we supposed to know -- "
Gunn comes to the doorway, "I know. And I can get us in."
Angel asks, "Us?"
In suburban hell, Lindsey is in the kitchen, along with his wife and son. Trish cooks as Lindsey assists Zach with his science studies, quizzing him on the composition of the various layers that make up the planet earth, starting with the outer layer, "Okay, from the top, the earth's outer layer is called?"
Zach answers, "The crust."
Lindsey asks, "And what's underneath that?"
Zach answers, "The mantle."
Lindsey asks, "And under that? C'mon, you know this one."
Zach is unsure, "The outer core?"
Lindsey asks, "And under that?"
Zach answers, more certain this time, "The inner core."
Lindsey asks, "And under that?"
Zach ponders it a moment, "Under that .... nothing?"
Lindsey smiles, "Nothing but the soft chewy center."
Trish interrupts Lindsey's teasing Zach, "Hey, hon? Oven light just went out. I need a bulb from the cellar."
Lindsey becomes uneasy, "There should be some in the hall closet."
She insists, "Just regular ones. Little ones are downstairs."
Lindsey tries to stall, noting Zach was just going to tell him about the "lithosphere."
Trish walks over to him and rests her hand on his shoulder, "I kinda need it now."
Lindsey reluctantly gets to his feet, "All right. I'll be right back." He walks over to the basement door, reaches out and slowly grabs the doorknob. He pauses to look back at Trish who tells him, "They're on that shelf, where we keep those thingies?"
Lindsey turns the knob and opens the door. He turns back to Trish once again. She smiles. Lindsey turns and heads downstairs, closing the door behind him.
As he slowly descends the steps, he peers around anxiously.
Gunn, Spike and Angel enter the W&H private parking garage. Gunn says he started working on the matter as soon as Harmony told him what was going on. He figured there must have been a precedent and he found one. The Partners had a problem with a guy in the Tokyo division at one time. Gunn reckons Lindsey got the idea for the tattoos by studying up on this man.
Angel figures Gunn is saying wherever that man was sent, that's where they'll find Lindsey.
Gunn confirms that.
Spike is hoping for "Toy Poodle hell", he's had enough of fire.
Gunn clarifies, "It's not hell. It's a Wolfram and Hart holding dimension."
Angel asks if the Partners haven't decided what to do with Lindsey.
Gunn notes it's W&H's "version of the penalty box."
Angel asks how they're going to get there.
Gunn asks if he's ever taken the Camaro as he points out a classic Camaro SS convertible and tosses Angel the keys.
Gunn is in the passenger seat, Spike in back, Angel is behind the wheel. The car is driving itself. Angel pulls his hands back from the steering wheel as it steers on its own, "This is weirding me out. Is this weirding you out?"
Spike leans up front, "What, you never heard of Knight Rider?" He looks at Gunn who stares straight ahead, "Knight Industries Two Thousand? K.I.T.T.?" When both Angel and Gunn give him blank looks in response, Spike gives up, "Never mind."
Gunn tells them the car will get them there, "Once we have Lindsey, it's on us to find the Wrath."
Spike doesn't like the sound of that, "The Wrath? You know that's gonna be a giggle."
Gunn says they'll have to go through it to get out, whatever it is.
Angel notes the streets aren't familiar.
Gunn reckons where they're headed won't be found on any map.
Spike is sure there's bad waiting, "There's gonna be fire."
The Camaro pulls into a tunnel in the dark of night and emerges out the other side, in the bright light of day.
As the car motors down the street, Spike notes the collection of look-alike houses, "This isn't hell. It's the 'burbs. Close enough."
Angel scoffs, "This is Lindsey's punishment for trying to kill me? Humph, maybe it's a reward."
At Fred's, Wes suggests Illyria could leave, go anywhere.
She says it's impossible.
Wes isn't convinced, "Are you telling me the great Illyria, idol of millions, was limited to one, small dimension?"
She tells him she traveled them all at will, "I walked worlds of smoke and half-truths, intangible. Worlds of torment and of unnamable beauty. Opaline towers as high as small moons. Glaciers that rippled with insensate lust. And one world with nothing but shrimp. I tired of that one quickly."
Wes asks why she stays in this world when there are obviously more appealing options, "Maybe not the shrimp one, but one where you'd be welcome like you never will be here. Why don't you go? You can go. Why don't you go?"
She moves with lightning speed, grabbing him by the throat. She releases him as she becomes more agitated, stalking around the room, "It's too small. It's too small. I can't breathe. There's no room for anything real."
Wes tells her it'll be all right.
She's not in the mood to calm down, "I should gut you where you stand. You challenged me. There's not enough space to open my jaws. My face is not my face. I don't know what it will say --"
Wes gently says her name and asks her to come with him.
A smiling Lindsey exits his house to the happy music, replaying the same scene as before as he strolls to the front walk to retrieve the newspaper, along with every other man of the house in the neighborhood. Once again, their movements are synchronized as they pick up their newspapers and wave to their neighbors across the street. He turns to go back inside, stopping to pick up the skateboard, exactly as before.
The Camaro pulls to a stop outside the house as Lindsey goes inside. Spike looks at the bright sunshine outside the car, "Oh, so we just open with being on fire. That's great."
Angel reckons they can pull their coats up over their heads to shield themselves and make a run for the shade.
Gunn opens the car door. As the sunlight streams in, both Angel and Spike shout and reflexively throw their hands up in an attempt to shield themselves from the expected immolation. Nothing happens.
Gunn reminds them it's an alternate dimension, "Sun's the non-frying variety?"
Spike and Angel both try to cover, Spike claiming he "figured that" as Angel says, "Right."
Gunn wonders if they're going to get out of the car.
As they walk up to the house, Angel notes the plan is to grab Lindsey and get out.
Gunn figures they'll need to kill anything that gets in their way.
Spike snidely wonders what's going to get in the way, "the family mutt?"
As Angel rings the doorbell, Gunn notes it's W&H, "Odds are there's something ugly behind that door."
A smiling Trish opens the door, "Can I help you?"
There's an awkward moment as the guys adjust, a pleasant, lovely woman not being what they expected. Angel finally manages to ask if Lindsey is home.
Trish invites them in and calls for Lindsey then politely offers coffee which Angel declines.
Lindsey comes down the stairs into the living room. He tells Trish their son's hockey stick has gone missing. He sees the guys, smiles, noting he didn't know they had company. Trish offers to go search for the hockey stick. She leaves.
Lindsey asks how he can help them.
Spike suggests he can drop the act now since the wife has gone.
Lindsey doesn't know what he's talking about.
Angel realizes, "You don't know who we are?"
Lindsey confirms that, "No. Do you play in the league?"
Angel introduces himself and the others.
Gunn suggests Lindsey may want to sit down.
Lindsey agrees and sits on the sofa. He wonders if they're there about a free vacation contest he entered.
Gunn asks if the name W&H sounds familiar to him. When Lindsey doesn't register any recognition of the name, Gunn adds it's a law firm, Lindsey used to work there.
Lindsey doesn't remember any of it, "The only lawyer I know is the one that fixes my speeding tickets, so --."
Angel sits opposite Lindsey, "That guy, he's not real. None of this is. You're under some spell."
Lindsey doesn't understand.
Spike sums it up, "You're in hell. We've come to break you out."
Lindsey thinks it's a joke and wants to know who put them up to it.
Gunn assures him it's not a joke, "You're in a mystical holding cell, an alternate reality."
Lindsey is incredulous "So, Trish is not my wife? And Zach's not my son?"
Spike reckons he's finally getting it. He wonders if Lindsey knows what the Wrath is.
Lindsey still thinks it's a joke as he gets up and goes to the window, expecting the prankster who set him up to be enjoying the show.
Angel tells him the life he's living is a lie.
Lindsey is no longer amused, "All right, this is starting to get a little less funny. I think you guys should leave."
In Angel's office at W&H, Harm and Lorne are keeping watch on Eve. She wants to know what's taking so long, they should have returned by now.
Harm notes it's tough getting an accurate time of arrival on alternate dimension travel, she's tried.
Eve just wants Lindsey back and she doesn't want to die.
Lorne suggests she calm down, reminding her nobody can touch her without Angel's permission.
Harm assures her she's safe, Angel left explicit instructions with her, "No torture. You're totally safe."
Eve snaps at them, a legal order isn't going to make any difference.
Lorne tells her, "Nobody can darken our bulletproof doors, not without our fearless leader's say so. This place is a fortress."
The security alarms start blaring. Harm notes that development with, "Uh-oh."
A suddenly not so confident Lorne wonders, "This thing coming after you, how bad on a scale of say, one to Terminator?"
They move toward the doorway and see the man who was at Lindsey's apartment earlier, striding down the hall toward them. Eve is concerned, "Oh, God. He's here."
Harmony isn't impressed, "That's the guy? He's just a suit!"
A security guard intercepts the intruder, his gun drawn. The man runs his fist through the security guy's body.
Lorne, Eve and Harm scream in unison.
In suburban hell, Angel tells Lindsey, "I can't believe I'm saying this, but we're here to help."
Lindsey demands they leave.
Angel grabs him, "Look, we're telling you the truth. You don't want to believe it, that's your choice. Either way, you're coming with us."
Lindsey tells him to let go.
Angel notices Lindsey is wearing a necklace with a large, round pendant hanging from it. He assumes that may be the problem as he rips it off, "Maybe this will help you make up your mind."
Lindsey falls to his hands and knees. He looks up, "Angel." He tells him to "make it quick."
Angel assures him if he were going to kill him, it wouldn't be quick. He jerks Lindsey to his feet.
Gunn notices the necklace lying on the floor as Trish returns.
Spike starts to make small talk, "Oh! Hi. Your hubby was just showing us a .. thing."
Trish steps out from behind the counter revealing she's armed with an assault rifle. She starts firing. Angel, Spike and Gunn dive for cover behind the sofa while a confused Lindsey stands in the middle of the living room. Angel reaches out and pulls Lindsey down behind the sofa as bullets, upholstery and furniture stuffing fly through the air.
Angel directs the others to get Lindsey to the car as he rushes Trish, taking numerous bullets to the chest in the process.
As Spike and Gunn get Lindsey outside, they find the Camaro is missing. An ice cream truck pulls to a stop. The driver starts shooting. The mailman pulls a pistol with each hand and starts firing at them as well. They rush back inside the house.
Angel is still fighting with Trish. Spike shouts to him, telling him the car is gone.
Gunn sees Zach coming down the steps and calls for the others to get down as the kid raises an assault rifle and starts firing. Everyone takes cover behind the sofa. Gunn shouts above the deafening sound of the shooting, asking where the Wrath is, they have to find it.
Spike reckons they already have, "Where's not the Wrath? The Wrath's all over!"
Angel tells Lindsey to think, does he know where it is?
Lindsey doesn't know.
Gunn peers over the sofa and notices the basement door. He thinks maybe it's a way out.
Lindsey is adamant, "No, we can't go down there. Not the cellar!"
Gunn figures they've found the Wrath. They get up, shove the sofa into Zach, knocking him against the wall and unconscious then make a run through the door and into the basement.
As they walk down the steps, Lindsey tells them they're all going to die.
Angel answers, "Not today."
Lindsey knows better, "Every day."
At W&H, the intruder flings the office doors open and enters. Harm morphs into vamp face and jumps onto his back. She grabs his head in an attempt to snap his neck but he barely notices. She tells Lorne and Eve to run. They run to the elevator.
The intruder tosses Harm off of himself and across the office, knocking her out.
As Eve urges Lorne on, he repeatedly pushes the elevator button, trying to get the doors to slide shut. The intruder stalks toward them.
The doors shut just as he gets to the elevator.
Angel and the others look around the basement, where they find weapons and various implements designed for torture. Spike walks over to a pile of organs and picks one up, "A heart?" He looks down at the pile, "Whose are these?"
Lindsey answers quietly, "Mine."
Spike quickly releases the heart and lets it fall back to the floor, "Oh."
Angel suggests they try to find a door, some way out of there.
Spike agrees that sounds like a good idea.
Angel calls Spike's attention to a blazing inferno, covered by a large door with a grated opening. Spike reckons they've found the Wrath. Angel tries to pull the door open but it won't budge.
Gunn notes the lock is mystical.
Angel starts to ask how they unlock it but Lindsey interrupts, "He's coming!"
Spike asks, "Who?"
Lindsey doesn't offer any clarification, "He knows. He always knows."
Spike still wants to know, "Who?"
Angel sees a very large demon, outfitted as an executioner, enter the basement, "Him." He directs Gunn to guard Lindsey.
Gunn moves with Lindsey off to a corner of the basement.
Fight ensues as Spike and Angel arm themselves, morph into game face and attack the demon. They're both pretty much getting their asses kicked, together and separately, as the demon seems much stronger and impervious to the blows of the weapons used against it.
As Angel is about to jump the demon again, he notices the demon has stopped fighting. He looks over at Gunn and sees he's put Lindsey's necklace around his own neck. Angel tells him no, but Gunn says he has to do it.
Angel won't leave him there.
Gunn insists, "You don't make the rules here, Wolfram and Hart does. If one leaves, one has to stay. A void is impossible." The door to the Wrath opens.
Angel looks at Gunn and realizes, "You knew."
Gunn concedes he did, "That thing about atonement."
Angel starts to argue, "Gunn --" After a moment he tells the others it's time to go.
Spike isn't liking this idea, "You are not bloody serious!"
Gunn tells them when he forgets, the door will close. They have to go.
Angel and Spike grab Lindsey and shove him ahead of themselves through the flames, then jump through.
Gunn turns away from the Wrath, "This is where .. I was ... I ... I belong." The door to the Wrath slams shut as Gunn's memory fades, "What was I doing? Why am I down here?"
Trish calls down from upstairs, "Honey! What are you doing down there?"
Gunn answers, "I don't know. Must be losing my mind."
Lorne and Eve exit the elevator into the parking garage. Eve reminds him they need car keys. Lorne opens a cabinet on the wall revealing dozens of sets of keys. He grabs one, having no clue which car they fit.
Lorne hits the security disarm on the key ring, numerous times, but can't figure out which car the electronic chirping is coming from.
Eve notices the parking lights on one of the cars flash in response to the security remote and urges Lorne to hurry as they rush toward it. They get in the car, Lorne puts the key into the ignition and assures Eve she'll like Canada, "Lots of deserters."
As he pulls the car out of its parking space, a flash of light deposits Lindsey, Angel and Spike on the hood. Lorne hits the brakes.
Spike rolls off the hood, "I'm on fire!!" He looks down at himself, realizes he's not, "Oh. Never mind."
Eve rushes to Lindsey and gives him a hug. She asks what they did to him.
Angel flatly tells her he'll be fine.
Spike adds, "Whereas we got shot and almost killed by a juiced-up S&M demon. Thanks for asking."
Angel reckons they need to get Lindsey upstairs as he and Spike support him on either side and drag him toward the elevator.
Lorne starts to tell Angel about the intruder, "You should know, there's a very tall, well dressed, uh -- Where's Gunn?"
Angel reluctantly tells Lorne that Gunn "stayed behind."
Lorne doesn't believe it, "Stayed behind? But you never leave a --"
Angel and Spike both look dejected in response.
Lorne doesn't push it, "Or .. I guess we do. That's what we do now."
A loud thumping is heard on the parking garage door.
Eve is fearful, "Oh, God."
The door is knocked inward, ripped from its hinges. The intruder steps into the garage and walks toward the others. Angel recalls Lorne's description, "Damn, he is well dressed."
As the man approaches, Eve begs him not to "do this."
Angel and Spike release Lindsey sending him falling to the floor. Angel steps forward, telling the man Eve is under his protection, she's not to be hurt.
The man reaches inside his coat and pulls out a pen.
Spike notes the unexpected, "Whoa, didn't see that coming."
The man tells Eve she knows how it works.
She pleads, suggesting he could talk to the Partners, tell them it was a mistake.
The man reaches inside his coat again.
Angel warns him to back off.
He pulls out a contract this time. He unfolds it and offers it to Eve who steps up. She tells Angel not to bother, it's over. She takes the pen and signs the various places on the papers where she's directed to do so.
Angel wants to know what's going on.
The man politely apologizes for the intrusion, "I'm Marcus Hamilton, your new liaison to the Senior Partners."
Angel is confused, "You're what?"
Hamilton explains, "Along with her immortality, and certain other privileges, Eve has signed over her duties to me."
Angel is incredulous, "This is about a contract? I thought you said you were going to die."
She reckons now, one day, she will.
Hamilton says the Partners felt it was time for a change, Eve was distracted too easily, "lost sight of the big picture."
Eve defends her actions, "I fell in love."
Hamilton congratulates her as she returns to Lindsey. He congratulates the others on a well executed escape. He says he'll be in touch, starts to walk away, then turns back, "I have some excellent ideas I can't wait to share."
Angel steps up close to Hamilton, "This is my house. The only ideas that matter are mine."
Hamilton doesn't disagree, "Oh, absolutely. That's the policy. The Senior Partners are behind you 100%."
Angel isn't buying it, "I doubt that."
Hamilton is looking forward to working himself in. As he departs, he welcomes Spike to the "team."
Lorne chuckles nervously, "Well, he's not so bad."
Wes and Illyria are standing on a building rooftop. He asks if she's okay.
She says she breathes easier there.
Wes notes, "The walls don't press in as hard when you can't see them."
She says they're still there.
Wes concedes that's true.
She muses, "All I am is what I am. I lived seven lives at once. I was power and the ecstasy of death. I was god to a god. Now .. I .. I'm trapped. On a roof. Just one roof. In this time. In this place with an unstable human who drinks too much whiskey and called me a smurf. You don't worship me at all, do you?"
Wes doesn't bother denying it, "And you really can't leave." He walks over to the roof's edge.
Illyria doesn't know, "And I fear in any other dimension, in this form, I'd be but prey to those I knew. I reek of humanity."
Wes disagrees, "Don't flatter yourself."
She moves to stand next to him at the roof's edge, "Your world is so small and yet you box yourselves in rooms even smaller. You shut yourselves inside, in rooms, in routines."
Wes tells her there are things worse than walls, "Terrible and beautiful. If we look at them for too long they will burn right through us. Truths we couldn't bear. Not every day."
Illyria notes "we" are weak.
Wes agrees as they both look out over the city.
In Angel's penthouse, Spike complains as Lorne pulls bullets out of his back. Lorne notes he doesn't have Fred's gentle touch.
Lindsey is sitting next to Eve on the sofa, his head on her shoulder.
Angel comes out of the bedroom, buttoning up a fresh shirt.
Lindsey notes his return, "Oh, look. It's the hero of the hour."
Angel clarifies, "I'm not your hero. I'm your warden."
Lindsey figures it's a matter of perspective.
Angel notices he hasn't changed much, "I thought a few months of torture at the hands of the Senior Partners would have dug a little deeper."
Lindsey says, as it turns out, "They can only undo you as far as you think you deserve to be undone. I wonder how Gunn's gonna make out."
Angel wants answers, "The Senior Partners. I want to know everything you know about them. About the apocalypse, about their plans for me."
Spike wants to know how he fits in as well, recalling Hamilton's welcome to him earlier. He figures it meant something.
Lindsey tells Angel he knows what Lindsey knows, "The world's a cesspool, full of selfish and greedy beasts. We live. We die." He looks at Eve, "Even you, babe."
Eve doesn't want to hear it.
Lindsey smiles, wondering if she's still glad to see him.
Angel recalls the line being familiar, "Yeah, hell's on earth. Holland Manners tried to sell me that line three years ago." ("Reprise")
Lindsey asks if Angel ever proved Holland wrong.
Angel offers it's a matter of perspective, "You know, Lindsey, we can philosophize all night. Hell, we could do it forever, huh?" He pulls up a chair and takes a seat opposite Lindsey, "I don't need to eat, sleep, drink. How about you?"
Lindsey answers, "That's what I like to see, the Angel of yore. Takes no prisoners, suffers no fools. How 'bout this? It's here. It's been here all along. You're just too damned stupid to see it."
Angel sits forward onto the edge of the chair, "See what?"
Lindsey spells it out, "The apocalypse, man. You're soaking in it."
Spike assures Lindsey he's seen an apocalypse or two, he'd know if one was right under his nose.
Lindsey corrects him, "Not an apocalypse, the apocalypse. What'd you think, a gong was gonna sound? Time to jump on your horses and fight the big fight? Starting pistol went off a long time ago, boys. You're playing for the bad guys. Every day you sit behind your desk and you learn a little more how to accept the world the way it is. Well, here's the rub. Heroes don't do that. Heroes don't accept the world the way it is. They fight it."
Angel puts it together, "You're saying, everything we do, it's a distraction to keep us busy, from looking under the surface."
Lindsey snaps his fingers, "Ding! We have a winner. The world keeps sliding towards entropy and degradation and what do you do? You sit in your big chair and you sign your checks, just like the Senior Partners planned. The war's here, Angel. And you're already two soldiers down."
In the house in the 'burbs, Gunn is now in Lindsey's role, in the kitchen, along with the wife and son. Trish cooks as Gunn assists Zach with his science studies, quizzing him on the composition of the various layers that make up the planet earth, starting with the outer layer, "Okay, from the top, the earth's outer layer is called?"
Zach answers, "The crust."
Gunn asks, "And what's underneath that?"
Zach answers, "The mantle."
Gunn asks, "And under that? C'mon, you know this one."
Zach is unsure, "The outer core?"
Gunn asks, "And under that?"
Zach answers, more certain this time, "The inner core."
Gunn asks, "And under that?"
Zach ponders it a moment, "Under that .... nothing?"
Gunn smiles, "Nothing but the soft chewy center."
Trish interrupts Gunn's teasing Zach, "Hey, hon? Oven light just went out. I need a bulb from the cellar."
Gunn becomes uneasy, "There should be some in the hall closet."
She insists, "Just regular ones. Little ones are downstairs."
Gunn tries to stall, noting Zach was just going to tell him about the "lithosphere."
Trish walks over to him and rests her hand on his shoulder, "I kinda need it now."
Gunn shifts nervously in his chair.
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S5/EPISODE 17
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Written by: Sarah
Fain & Elizabeth
Craft |
Original Air Date: April 14, 2004 |
At W&H, Angel is sitting alone at the head of the conference table, drumming his fingers against it. He impatiently straightens some papers then hits the intercom and calls for Harmony. She answers, "I know! I called everyone, they're just --"
Angel interrupts her, "Not here. I can see that. If they were here, I wouldn't be alone. Why am I alone?"
He looks up to see Harm has entered the office, "Well, you can be super grouchy."
He flips off the intercom, "The meeting?"
Harm tells him everybody is busy, "Wes is stuck baby-sitting Miss 'I used to rule the world, bow down before me, minion scum.' Why are we not killing her again?"
Angel asks, "Gunn?"
Harm considers that and reckons it might work if they had one that was big enough.
An irritated Angel asks, "Where is Gunn?"
She reminds him Gunn is still in the W&H medical unit, "You know, from when Wesley --" She makes a crunching noise as she mimes a stabbing motion. She adds, "And Lorne's kind of M.I.A. since --"
Angel knows the answer, "Fred."
Harm nods. She waits briefly, then breaks the silence, "Okey dokey, then." She leaves the office as Spike comes in.
Spike asks Angel where everyone else is.
Angel answers, "Apparently not coming."
Spike thought this meeting was important.
Angel is relieved, thinking Spike gets it, "At least somebody --"
Spike raises a briefcase and sets in on the table, "My first official parley as a very loosely affiliated member of ... What are we?" He mutters as he snaps open the locks on the briefcase, "Tell me we're not Scoobies."
Angel starts to answer, "We don't have a --"
Spike is glad to hear it, "A name? Well, that's probably for the best. You'd wanna be 'Angel's Avengers' or something."
Angel scoffs, "Angel's Avengers, that's --" He thinks on it moment, rather liking the sound of it after all.
Spike asks what's on the agenda as he removes something from his briefcase and lowers the lid.
Angel looks over the papers on the table, saying he has assignments for people. His explanation is interrupted by the sound of a can's tab being popped. He looks up at Spike who innocently asks, "What? I'm listening." He raises the can from his lap to his lips, "With beer."
Angel is irritated, "Forget it. You know what? This isn't a meeting. This is you, being annoying." He gets up from the table, sighs heavily and walks over to the window.
Spike retrieves one of the sheets of paper from the table, "Hey, bullet points! Classy." He looks over the paper, "Why am I always reconnaissance? I should get a decently flash gig like, 'save the girl' or 'steal the emerald with the girl.'"
Angel turns away from the window and recalls quietly, "Handsome man saved me from the monsters."
Spike asks what he's talking about.
Angel answers, "That's the first thing Fred said to me. In Pylea." He walks across the conference room as he relates the tale, "She was trapped, hiding, afraid. Nearly crazy. Crazy, but brave. I should never have let her come here. Bad things always happen here. "
Spike offers, "Hate to break it to ya mate, but bad things always happen everywhere. Besides, she wanted to be here. It was her choice."
Angel wonders, "Was it?"
Spike doesn't like what he's hearing as he gets to his feet, "Bugger. You're fixing to do something stupid, aren't you?"
Angel admits, "Done it. Came here. Spend every day lying to myself about making the world a better place."
Spike welcomes him to the planet, "We all paint on our happy faces every day when all we really want is to pound the neighbor's missis, steal his Ben Franklins. While we're at it not think about the third of the world that's starving to death." He walks over to the window and looks out.
Angel has his hands resting on the conference table top as he leans over it, "I'm not saying that I can fix everything. I just .. I .. I have to do better. The Senior Partners have a plan."
Spike scoffs, "Yeah, the prophecy. That ever lovin' apocalypse you keep going on about."
A frustrated Angel wonders which apocalypse, "The one last year or the year before that?" He knows the Senior Partners are up to something and he doesn't intend to wait to be surprised with it. He doesn't want to be in the dark anymore.
Spike agrees with that, "Might be easier if we knew anyone who had a direct line to the big guys."
Angel and Spike are confronting Eve at Lindsey's, where she's still hiding out, concealed from the Partners by the symbols covering the walls. She refuses to help.
Angel points out he wasn't entering into a negotiation with her.
Eve isn't impressed, she wonders what more he could do to her, "I've been trapped in this house for weeks like a --"
Spike offers some choices, "Rat? Snake? Beady little rat snake?"
Angel notes she's hiding, not trapped. He reckons she knows the minute she steps outside of the place, the second the symbols on the walls are no longer concealing her whereabouts from the Partners, they'll find her. He suggests she not bother looking for pity, "The only thing you care about is saving your own ass."
Eve informs him the only thing she cared about is gone, Angel let the Partners take him.
Angel suggests he could easily betray her whereabouts and the specifics of her security system to the Partners as well.
An unsure Eve says, "You wouldn't --"
Angel offers to keep quiet if she tells him what he wants to know. Their conversation is interrupted by a forceful tremor that shakes the building.
Eve accuses Angel, "Oh, you bastard! You told them! You --"
Angel assures her it wasn't him as he and Spike look around nervously.
Eve looks toward the door as sounds of items crashing and glass shattering get louder, "Oh, God. They're coming!" She pleads with Angel, "Please, don't let them take me! Angel, please! I'll tell you! I'll tell you anything you want!" Angel looks toward the door as the doorknob is rattled from the outside.
The door is thrown open. A tall, imposing figure of a man in a finely tailored suit strides in, only to find the room empty. He looks toward the open window.
A sullen Lorne is sitting at a bar as the demon bartender sings for him, badly but with enthusiasm. He finishes, waiting for Lorne to say something. When he doesn't, the bartender reckons his girlfriend is going to say no. He figures he should have bought a bigger ring.
Lorne tells him the wedding will be in June and it's going to rain, so he should bring a tent.
The bartender smiles, "She's going to say yes?"
Lorne confirms it then pushes his glass forward for a refill, "More sea, less breeze, huh?"
The bartender refills the glass, "From now on, your money's no good here." He wonders what Lorne thinks about the possibility of his having a son.
Lorne answers, "What do I think? I think I'm tired. I think I'm sick and tired of wearing bells on my toes and making like everything's gonna be okay. I think it's pathetic that lately I'm too scared and sad to tell people the truth so I just say what they want to hear instead. Most of all, I think the term 'Happy Hour' should be banned from the English language. There's nothing happy about this hour or any other. What I know is, I started drinking the moment I found out a girl I loved was gonna die. Every time I get to the bottom of the glass, I hope that last drop is gonna take me the distance." He takes a drink.
The bartender doesn't know what to say, "Okay."
Lorne continues, "A simple plan that failed utterly. Which is why I'm going to heave my tuchis off this stool, strap the bells on, and with a smile and a quip, go back into the belly of a very ugly beast and pretend like I can help." He looks up at the bartender as he pushes the empty glass away, "Cause that's what the green guy does." He gets up and departs.
Angel, Spike and Eve exit the elevator into the upper floor lobby of W&H. Angel calls to Harm who steps out from behind her desk and joins them as they walk down the hall. He directs her to put security on alert, make sure nobody gets into the building without clearance from him. He wants a guard positioned at every possible entrance.
Harm starts to point out this plan never works.
Angel sternly says her name.
She agrees to get on it as she peels off from the others.
Angel tells Spike to stay with Eve and kill anything that gets past security.
Spike asks where Angel is going.
Angel answers, "To see my lawyer."
Angel pays a call on Gunn who is still in a bed in the W&H medical unit, "We have a problem. The Senior Partners found Eve. They sent something to take her out. I need to know if I have jurisdiction to protect her. What's protocol here?"
Gunn closes the magazine he's been reading, "I don't know."
Angel walks over to the bed and takes the magazine from him, "Right. Well, when you're through reading about important things like, um, 'Trista and Ryan's big baby plans', maybe you can put some thought into it." He sets the magazine aside.
Gunn isn't sure.
Angel reminds him, "You paid a high price for what's in that brain. So use it."
Gunn tells him there's a provision in his contract that allows a CEO of W&H to invoke an order, allowing him to take custody of a "wayward employee." He notes it's not usually used for protection, but it should suffice.
Angel asks what he needs to do.
Gunn offers to make a call.
Angel starts to leave. He stops at the door and turns back, "Listen, Gunn. I know you feel bad about your part in what happened to Fred, and you should. For the rest of your life it should wake you up in the middle of the night. And it will, because you're a good man. You signed a piece of paper, that's all."
Gunn admits he knew, "Not about Fred but when I signed I knew there would be consequences."
Angel understands, "You know, the thing about atonement is, you never run out of chances. But you gotta take 'em. You can't hide in some hospital room and pretend it's all gonna go away. 'Cause it never will."
Wes is dreaming of himself sitting in a chair as Fred comes up behind him, "You have a visitor."
Wes sullenly answers, "I thought I was in isolation."
Fred kisses him on the cheek, "Whose fault is that?" She moves around to the front of him and kneels. She smiles, "Tell me a joke?"
Wes obliges, "Two men walk into a bar. The first man orders a Scotch and soda. The second man remembers something he'd forgotten, and it doubles him over with pain. He falls to the floor, shaking, and then through the floor and into the earth. He looks back up at the first man, but he doesn't call out to him. They're not that close."
Fred looks up at him, "Yeah, you always know where you are."
Wes says it's his "particular skill."
Fred sits on his lap, "This is only the first layer. Don't you wanna see how deep I go?"
Wes wakes from his dream. He's sitting in a chair at Fred's, Illyria is also there. She notes he's been sitting for a long while.
He says he fell asleep.
She says he "drank a great deal of that poison." As Wes rubs his eyes, she continues, "You called me a lot of names meant to hurt feelings I no longer have. And then you sat there for hours making noise with your nose."
Wes tells her, "I was dreaming, you twit."
Illyria notes he said "her" name, Fred.
Wes says he was having a nightmare. He takes another drink, "I don't suppose you have nightmares, or sleep, or any of that human crap."
She answers, "In my time, nightmares walked among us. Walked and danced. Skewering victims in plain sight, laying their fears and worst desires out for everyone to see. This ... to make us laugh."
Wes offers a sarcastic, "I'll bet you were jolly as frat boys."
Illyria doesn't seem to pay him any heed, "And now nightmares are trapped inside the heads of humans. Pitiful echoes of themselves. I wonder whom they angered so to merit such a fate." She looks around the room, becoming more agitated.
Wes reckons she must find this world terribly disappointing.
She admits that.
Wes concedes he's not all that fond of it himself as he takes another drink.
Illyria walks briskly toward him, "Why don't you leave?"
Eve and Spike are in Angel's office. She derisively notes it was a brilliant plan to bring her there, the Senior Partners will never think to look for her at W&H. She figures she's going to die.
An annoyed Spike tells her she's making it hard for him to want to help her out.
Angel comes in, having heard Spike's comment. He says they don't want to help her, but they will. He tells her she's under his protection.
Eve is grateful for that.
Angel lets her know he can take it away with one phone call. He wants some answers from her starting with who she is and what she does for the Partners.
Eve sits down and answers, telling him she's a liaison, "I liaise."
Angel and Spike both stand in front of her, looking incredulous and threatening.
Eve gets back up, asking what they want her to say, "I'm a leprechaun. I'm from Brigadoon."
Spike's heard that one before.
Eve answers, "There are layers upon layers at Wolfram and Hart, Angel. Things you'll never understand. What am I? I'm a child of the Senior Partners. Created to do their bidding."
Angel reckons she's saying she's an" immortal." He asks why she's there.
She tells him she watches, she tells the Partners what she sees, she passes messages to him if there are any.
Angel wants to know what the Partners are.
Eve claims ignorance, "Do you honestly believe that the Senior Partners would let me have access to that information? Angel, for someone so old, you're so young. I only know what they want me to know and only when they want me to know it." She concedes she might know something, perhaps a lot, but she doesn't have access to it, "It's locked in my head somewhere and I don't have the key."
Spike and Angel are both frustrated with the conversation going in circles.
Eve offers the irony, "There was someone who could've told you everything you want to know and you let the Senior Partners take him away. Lindsey's dedicated years of his life to the study of the Senior Partners. No one knows more about them than he does. What they've done, what they plan to do."
Angel thought Lindsey was after him, "You're saying bringing Spike back, the fail-safe ("You're Welcome") ... that was all about the Senior Partners?"
Eve concedes it was about Angel as well, "He really doesn't like you. He may know more about you then you do."
Angel reckons that's why the Partners took Lindsey.
Spike agrees, they couldn't risk Lindsey and Angel having a chat.
Eve ponders, "And now .. what he's going through."
Angel asks if the Partners didn't kill him.
Eve is sure they wouldn't, "They'd want him to suffer horrors. Lindsey is in some hideous, awful hell."
Lindsey is in bed with an attractive blond woman, kissing her. They're both wearing wedding rings. He greets her as he smiles, "Good morning."
She agrees it has been so far.
A young boy comes into the room and flops down onto the bed between them, "Stop it! That's how I get sisters."
Lindsey teases him then looks at his 'wife' and smiles, "So, what are we going to do today?"
A perfect, happy family tableau.
Lindsey steps outside his house, happy music plays. He smiles as he strolls to the front walk to retrieve the newspaper. The suburban neighborhood is made up of a tract of nice, upper scale houses, all looking the same.
As Lindsey walks to the sidewalk, the men of the other houses also walk out to pick up their newspapers, all synchronized perfectly in their movements and actions. They pick up the papers, stand and wave to their neighbors across the street, turn and head back to their houses.
Lindsey stops to pick up his son's skateboard, then peruses the paper as he goes back inside.
Angel is sitting behind the desk in his office. Eve, Lorne and Spike are also there. Spike notes "There's thousands of different kinds of hells. You got your fire hell. Your ice hell. Your ... ice hell. Your .. upside-down hell."
Angel's getting annoyed, "I don't care if he's in 'Toy Poodles On Parade' hell, he's got information that we need."
Spike isn't confident the source of that information is reliable, "According to the little girl whose only reason for being is to see her little Pookie Bear again."
Eve asks Lorne to tell them she's not lying.
Lorne confirms that, "No one can fake it through the Pina Colada song. Not once the chorus kicks in."
Angel gets to his feet, frustrated, "If Lindsey can tell me what the Senior Partners have planned, I want him." He looks at Spike, "You got a better idea how to do it, I'm totally open."
Spike raises his hands, "Didn't say that. Just pointed out, that this one sucks. We're looking for a hell dimension in a haystack. How are we supposed to know -- "
Gunn comes to the doorway, "I know. And I can get us in."
Angel asks, "Us?"
In suburban hell, Lindsey is in the kitchen, along with his wife and son. Trish cooks as Lindsey assists Zach with his science studies, quizzing him on the composition of the various layers that make up the planet earth, starting with the outer layer, "Okay, from the top, the earth's outer layer is called?"
Zach answers, "The crust."
Lindsey asks, "And what's underneath that?"
Zach answers, "The mantle."
Lindsey asks, "And under that? C'mon, you know this one."
Zach is unsure, "The outer core?"
Lindsey asks, "And under that?"
Zach answers, more certain this time, "The inner core."
Lindsey asks, "And under that?"
Zach ponders it a moment, "Under that .... nothing?"
Lindsey smiles, "Nothing but the soft chewy center."
Trish interrupts Lindsey's teasing Zach, "Hey, hon? Oven light just went out. I need a bulb from the cellar."
Lindsey becomes uneasy, "There should be some in the hall closet."
She insists, "Just regular ones. Little ones are downstairs."
Lindsey tries to stall, noting Zach was just going to tell him about the "lithosphere."
Trish walks over to him and rests her hand on his shoulder, "I kinda need it now."
Lindsey reluctantly gets to his feet, "All right. I'll be right back." He walks over to the basement door, reaches out and slowly grabs the doorknob. He pauses to look back at Trish who tells him, "They're on that shelf, where we keep those thingies?"
Lindsey turns the knob and opens the door. He turns back to Trish once again. She smiles. Lindsey turns and heads downstairs, closing the door behind him.
As he slowly descends the steps, he peers around anxiously.
Gunn, Spike and Angel enter the W&H private parking garage. Gunn says he started working on the matter as soon as Harmony told him what was going on. He figured there must have been a precedent and he found one. The Partners had a problem with a guy in the Tokyo division at one time. Gunn reckons Lindsey got the idea for the tattoos by studying up on this man.
Angel figures Gunn is saying wherever that man was sent, that's where they'll find Lindsey.
Gunn confirms that.
Spike is hoping for "Toy Poodle hell", he's had enough of fire.
Gunn clarifies, "It's not hell. It's a Wolfram and Hart holding dimension."
Angel asks if the Partners haven't decided what to do with Lindsey.
Gunn notes it's W&H's "version of the penalty box."
Angel asks how they're going to get there.
Gunn asks if he's ever taken the Camaro as he points out a classic Camaro SS convertible and tosses Angel the keys.
Gunn is in the passenger seat, Spike in back, Angel is behind the wheel. The car is driving itself. Angel pulls his hands back from the steering wheel as it steers on its own, "This is weirding me out. Is this weirding you out?"
Spike leans up front, "What, you never heard of Knight Rider?" He looks at Gunn who stares straight ahead, "Knight Industries Two Thousand? K.I.T.T.?" When both Angel and Gunn give him blank looks in response, Spike gives up, "Never mind."
Gunn tells them the car will get them there, "Once we have Lindsey, it's on us to find the Wrath."
Spike doesn't like the sound of that, "The Wrath? You know that's gonna be a giggle."
Gunn says they'll have to go through it to get out, whatever it is.
Angel notes the streets aren't familiar.
Gunn reckons where they're headed won't be found on any map.
Spike is sure there's bad waiting, "There's gonna be fire."
The Camaro pulls into a tunnel in the dark of night and emerges out the other side, in the bright light of day.
As the car motors down the street, Spike notes the collection of look-alike houses, "This isn't hell. It's the 'burbs. Close enough."
Angel scoffs, "This is Lindsey's punishment for trying to kill me? Humph, maybe it's a reward."
At Fred's, Wes suggests Illyria could leave, go anywhere.
She says it's impossible.
Wes isn't convinced, "Are you telling me the great Illyria, idol of millions, was limited to one, small dimension?"
She tells him she traveled them all at will, "I walked worlds of smoke and half-truths, intangible. Worlds of torment and of unnamable beauty. Opaline towers as high as small moons. Glaciers that rippled with insensate lust. And one world with nothing but shrimp. I tired of that one quickly."
Wes asks why she stays in this world when there are obviously more appealing options, "Maybe not the shrimp one, but one where you'd be welcome like you never will be here. Why don't you go? You can go. Why don't you go?"
She moves with lightning speed, grabbing him by the throat. She releases him as she becomes more agitated, stalking around the room, "It's too small. It's too small. I can't breathe. There's no room for anything real."
Wes tells her it'll be all right.
She's not in the mood to calm down, "I should gut you where you stand. You challenged me. There's not enough space to open my jaws. My face is not my face. I don't know what it will say --"
Wes gently says her name and asks her to come with him.
A smiling Lindsey exits his house to the happy music, replaying the same scene as before as he strolls to the front walk to retrieve the newspaper, along with every other man of the house in the neighborhood. Once again, their movements are synchronized as they pick up their newspapers and wave to their neighbors across the street. He turns to go back inside, stopping to pick up the skateboard, exactly as before.
The Camaro pulls to a stop outside the house as Lindsey goes inside. Spike looks at the bright sunshine outside the car, "Oh, so we just open with being on fire. That's great."
Angel reckons they can pull their coats up over their heads to shield themselves and make a run for the shade.
Gunn opens the car door. As the sunlight streams in, both Angel and Spike shout and reflexively throw their hands up in an attempt to shield themselves from the expected immolation. Nothing happens.
Gunn reminds them it's an alternate dimension, "Sun's the non-frying variety?"
Spike and Angel both try to cover, Spike claiming he "figured that" as Angel says, "Right."
Gunn wonders if they're going to get out of the car.
As they walk up to the house, Angel notes the plan is to grab Lindsey and get out.
Gunn figures they'll need to kill anything that gets in their way.
Spike snidely wonders what's going to get in the way, "the family mutt?"
As Angel rings the doorbell, Gunn notes it's W&H, "Odds are there's something ugly behind that door."
A smiling Trish opens the door, "Can I help you?"
There's an awkward moment as the guys adjust, a pleasant, lovely woman not being what they expected. Angel finally manages to ask if Lindsey is home.
Trish invites them in and calls for Lindsey then politely offers coffee which Angel declines.
Lindsey comes down the stairs into the living room. He tells Trish their son's hockey stick has gone missing. He sees the guys, smiles, noting he didn't know they had company. Trish offers to go search for the hockey stick. She leaves.
Lindsey asks how he can help them.
Spike suggests he can drop the act now since the wife has gone.
Lindsey doesn't know what he's talking about.
Angel realizes, "You don't know who we are?"
Lindsey confirms that, "No. Do you play in the league?"
Angel introduces himself and the others.
Gunn suggests Lindsey may want to sit down.
Lindsey agrees and sits on the sofa. He wonders if they're there about a free vacation contest he entered.
Gunn asks if the name W&H sounds familiar to him. When Lindsey doesn't register any recognition of the name, Gunn adds it's a law firm, Lindsey used to work there.
Lindsey doesn't remember any of it, "The only lawyer I know is the one that fixes my speeding tickets, so --."
Angel sits opposite Lindsey, "That guy, he's not real. None of this is. You're under some spell."
Lindsey doesn't understand.
Spike sums it up, "You're in hell. We've come to break you out."
Lindsey thinks it's a joke and wants to know who put them up to it.
Gunn assures him it's not a joke, "You're in a mystical holding cell, an alternate reality."
Lindsey is incredulous "So, Trish is not my wife? And Zach's not my son?"
Spike reckons he's finally getting it. He wonders if Lindsey knows what the Wrath is.
Lindsey still thinks it's a joke as he gets up and goes to the window, expecting the prankster who set him up to be enjoying the show.
Angel tells him the life he's living is a lie.
Lindsey is no longer amused, "All right, this is starting to get a little less funny. I think you guys should leave."
In Angel's office at W&H, Harm and Lorne are keeping watch on Eve. She wants to know what's taking so long, they should have returned by now.
Harm notes it's tough getting an accurate time of arrival on alternate dimension travel, she's tried.
Eve just wants Lindsey back and she doesn't want to die.
Lorne suggests she calm down, reminding her nobody can touch her without Angel's permission.
Harm assures her she's safe, Angel left explicit instructions with her, "No torture. You're totally safe."
Eve snaps at them, a legal order isn't going to make any difference.
Lorne tells her, "Nobody can darken our bulletproof doors, not without our fearless leader's say so. This place is a fortress."
The security alarms start blaring. Harm notes that development with, "Uh-oh."
A suddenly not so confident Lorne wonders, "This thing coming after you, how bad on a scale of say, one to Terminator?"
They move toward the doorway and see the man who was at Lindsey's apartment earlier, striding down the hall toward them. Eve is concerned, "Oh, God. He's here."
Harmony isn't impressed, "That's the guy? He's just a suit!"
A security guard intercepts the intruder, his gun drawn. The man runs his fist through the security guy's body.
Lorne, Eve and Harm scream in unison.
In suburban hell, Angel tells Lindsey, "I can't believe I'm saying this, but we're here to help."
Lindsey demands they leave.
Angel grabs him, "Look, we're telling you the truth. You don't want to believe it, that's your choice. Either way, you're coming with us."
Lindsey tells him to let go.
Angel notices Lindsey is wearing a necklace with a large, round pendant hanging from it. He assumes that may be the problem as he rips it off, "Maybe this will help you make up your mind."
Lindsey falls to his hands and knees. He looks up, "Angel." He tells him to "make it quick."
Angel assures him if he were going to kill him, it wouldn't be quick. He jerks Lindsey to his feet.
Gunn notices the necklace lying on the floor as Trish returns.
Spike starts to make small talk, "Oh! Hi. Your hubby was just showing us a .. thing."
Trish steps out from behind the counter revealing she's armed with an assault rifle. She starts firing. Angel, Spike and Gunn dive for cover behind the sofa while a confused Lindsey stands in the middle of the living room. Angel reaches out and pulls Lindsey down behind the sofa as bullets, upholstery and furniture stuffing fly through the air.
Angel directs the others to get Lindsey to the car as he rushes Trish, taking numerous bullets to the chest in the process.
As Spike and Gunn get Lindsey outside, they find the Camaro is missing. An ice cream truck pulls to a stop. The driver starts shooting. The mailman pulls a pistol with each hand and starts firing at them as well. They rush back inside the house.
Angel is still fighting with Trish. Spike shouts to him, telling him the car is gone.
Gunn sees Zach coming down the steps and calls for the others to get down as the kid raises an assault rifle and starts firing. Everyone takes cover behind the sofa. Gunn shouts above the deafening sound of the shooting, asking where the Wrath is, they have to find it.
Spike reckons they already have, "Where's not the Wrath? The Wrath's all over!"
Angel tells Lindsey to think, does he know where it is?
Lindsey doesn't know.
Gunn peers over the sofa and notices the basement door. He thinks maybe it's a way out.
Lindsey is adamant, "No, we can't go down there. Not the cellar!"
Gunn figures they've found the Wrath. They get up, shove the sofa into Zach, knocking him against the wall and unconscious then make a run through the door and into the basement.
As they walk down the steps, Lindsey tells them they're all going to die.
Angel answers, "Not today."
Lindsey knows better, "Every day."
At W&H, the intruder flings the office doors open and enters. Harm morphs into vamp face and jumps onto his back. She grabs his head in an attempt to snap his neck but he barely notices. She tells Lorne and Eve to run. They run to the elevator.
The intruder tosses Harm off of himself and across the office, knocking her out.
As Eve urges Lorne on, he repeatedly pushes the elevator button, trying to get the doors to slide shut. The intruder stalks toward them.
The doors shut just as he gets to the elevator.
Angel and the others look around the basement, where they find weapons and various implements designed for torture. Spike walks over to a pile of organs and picks one up, "A heart?" He looks down at the pile, "Whose are these?"
Lindsey answers quietly, "Mine."
Spike quickly releases the heart and lets it fall back to the floor, "Oh."
Angel suggests they try to find a door, some way out of there.
Spike agrees that sounds like a good idea.
Angel calls Spike's attention to a blazing inferno, covered by a large door with a grated opening. Spike reckons they've found the Wrath. Angel tries to pull the door open but it won't budge.
Gunn notes the lock is mystical.
Angel starts to ask how they unlock it but Lindsey interrupts, "He's coming!"
Spike asks, "Who?"
Lindsey doesn't offer any clarification, "He knows. He always knows."
Spike still wants to know, "Who?"
Angel sees a very large demon, outfitted as an executioner, enter the basement, "Him." He directs Gunn to guard Lindsey.
Gunn moves with Lindsey off to a corner of the basement.
Fight ensues as Spike and Angel arm themselves, morph into game face and attack the demon. They're both pretty much getting their asses kicked, together and separately, as the demon seems much stronger and impervious to the blows of the weapons used against it.
As Angel is about to jump the demon again, he notices the demon has stopped fighting. He looks over at Gunn and sees he's put Lindsey's necklace around his own neck. Angel tells him no, but Gunn says he has to do it.
Angel won't leave him there.
Gunn insists, "You don't make the rules here, Wolfram and Hart does. If one leaves, one has to stay. A void is impossible." The door to the Wrath opens.
Angel looks at Gunn and realizes, "You knew."
Gunn concedes he did, "That thing about atonement."
Angel starts to argue, "Gunn --" After a moment he tells the others it's time to go.
Spike isn't liking this idea, "You are not bloody serious!"
Gunn tells them when he forgets, the door will close. They have to go.
Angel and Spike grab Lindsey and shove him ahead of themselves through the flames, then jump through.
Gunn turns away from the Wrath, "This is where .. I was ... I ... I belong." The door to the Wrath slams shut as Gunn's memory fades, "What was I doing? Why am I down here?"
Trish calls down from upstairs, "Honey! What are you doing down there?"
Gunn answers, "I don't know. Must be losing my mind."
Lorne and Eve exit the elevator into the parking garage. Eve reminds him they need car keys. Lorne opens a cabinet on the wall revealing dozens of sets of keys. He grabs one, having no clue which car they fit.
Lorne hits the security disarm on the key ring, numerous times, but can't figure out which car the electronic chirping is coming from.
Eve notices the parking lights on one of the cars flash in response to the security remote and urges Lorne to hurry as they rush toward it. They get in the car, Lorne puts the key into the ignition and assures Eve she'll like Canada, "Lots of deserters."
As he pulls the car out of its parking space, a flash of light deposits Lindsey, Angel and Spike on the hood. Lorne hits the brakes.
Spike rolls off the hood, "I'm on fire!!" He looks down at himself, realizes he's not, "Oh. Never mind."
Eve rushes to Lindsey and gives him a hug. She asks what they did to him.
Angel flatly tells her he'll be fine.
Spike adds, "Whereas we got shot and almost killed by a juiced-up S&M demon. Thanks for asking."
Angel reckons they need to get Lindsey upstairs as he and Spike support him on either side and drag him toward the elevator.
Lorne starts to tell Angel about the intruder, "You should know, there's a very tall, well dressed, uh -- Where's Gunn?"
Angel reluctantly tells Lorne that Gunn "stayed behind."
Lorne doesn't believe it, "Stayed behind? But you never leave a --"
Angel and Spike both look dejected in response.
Lorne doesn't push it, "Or .. I guess we do. That's what we do now."
A loud thumping is heard on the parking garage door.
Eve is fearful, "Oh, God."
The door is knocked inward, ripped from its hinges. The intruder steps into the garage and walks toward the others. Angel recalls Lorne's description, "Damn, he is well dressed."
As the man approaches, Eve begs him not to "do this."
Angel and Spike release Lindsey sending him falling to the floor. Angel steps forward, telling the man Eve is under his protection, she's not to be hurt.
The man reaches inside his coat and pulls out a pen.
Spike notes the unexpected, "Whoa, didn't see that coming."
The man tells Eve she knows how it works.
She pleads, suggesting he could talk to the Partners, tell them it was a mistake.
The man reaches inside his coat again.
Angel warns him to back off.
He pulls out a contract this time. He unfolds it and offers it to Eve who steps up. She tells Angel not to bother, it's over. She takes the pen and signs the various places on the papers where she's directed to do so.
Angel wants to know what's going on.
The man politely apologizes for the intrusion, "I'm Marcus Hamilton, your new liaison to the Senior Partners."
Angel is confused, "You're what?"
Hamilton explains, "Along with her immortality, and certain other privileges, Eve has signed over her duties to me."
Angel is incredulous, "This is about a contract? I thought you said you were going to die."
She reckons now, one day, she will.
Hamilton says the Partners felt it was time for a change, Eve was distracted too easily, "lost sight of the big picture."
Eve defends her actions, "I fell in love."
Hamilton congratulates her as she returns to Lindsey. He congratulates the others on a well executed escape. He says he'll be in touch, starts to walk away, then turns back, "I have some excellent ideas I can't wait to share."
Angel steps up close to Hamilton, "This is my house. The only ideas that matter are mine."
Hamilton doesn't disagree, "Oh, absolutely. That's the policy. The Senior Partners are behind you 100%."
Angel isn't buying it, "I doubt that."
Hamilton is looking forward to working himself in. As he departs, he welcomes Spike to the "team."
Lorne chuckles nervously, "Well, he's not so bad."
Wes and Illyria are standing on a building rooftop. He asks if she's okay.
She says she breathes easier there.
Wes notes, "The walls don't press in as hard when you can't see them."
She says they're still there.
Wes concedes that's true.
She muses, "All I am is what I am. I lived seven lives at once. I was power and the ecstasy of death. I was god to a god. Now .. I .. I'm trapped. On a roof. Just one roof. In this time. In this place with an unstable human who drinks too much whiskey and called me a smurf. You don't worship me at all, do you?"
Wes doesn't bother denying it, "And you really can't leave." He walks over to the roof's edge.
Illyria doesn't know, "And I fear in any other dimension, in this form, I'd be but prey to those I knew. I reek of humanity."
Wes disagrees, "Don't flatter yourself."
She moves to stand next to him at the roof's edge, "Your world is so small and yet you box yourselves in rooms even smaller. You shut yourselves inside, in rooms, in routines."
Wes tells her there are things worse than walls, "Terrible and beautiful. If we look at them for too long they will burn right through us. Truths we couldn't bear. Not every day."
Illyria notes "we" are weak.
Wes agrees as they both look out over the city.
In Angel's penthouse, Spike complains as Lorne pulls bullets out of his back. Lorne notes he doesn't have Fred's gentle touch.
Lindsey is sitting next to Eve on the sofa, his head on her shoulder.
Angel comes out of the bedroom, buttoning up a fresh shirt.
Lindsey notes his return, "Oh, look. It's the hero of the hour."
Angel clarifies, "I'm not your hero. I'm your warden."
Lindsey figures it's a matter of perspective.
Angel notices he hasn't changed much, "I thought a few months of torture at the hands of the Senior Partners would have dug a little deeper."
Lindsey says, as it turns out, "They can only undo you as far as you think you deserve to be undone. I wonder how Gunn's gonna make out."
Angel wants answers, "The Senior Partners. I want to know everything you know about them. About the apocalypse, about their plans for me."
Spike wants to know how he fits in as well, recalling Hamilton's welcome to him earlier. He figures it meant something.
Lindsey tells Angel he knows what Lindsey knows, "The world's a cesspool, full of selfish and greedy beasts. We live. We die." He looks at Eve, "Even you, babe."
Eve doesn't want to hear it.
Lindsey smiles, wondering if she's still glad to see him.
Angel recalls the line being familiar, "Yeah, hell's on earth. Holland Manners tried to sell me that line three years ago." ("Reprise")
Lindsey asks if Angel ever proved Holland wrong.
Angel offers it's a matter of perspective, "You know, Lindsey, we can philosophize all night. Hell, we could do it forever, huh?" He pulls up a chair and takes a seat opposite Lindsey, "I don't need to eat, sleep, drink. How about you?"
Lindsey answers, "That's what I like to see, the Angel of yore. Takes no prisoners, suffers no fools. How 'bout this? It's here. It's been here all along. You're just too damned stupid to see it."
Angel sits forward onto the edge of the chair, "See what?"
Lindsey spells it out, "The apocalypse, man. You're soaking in it."
Spike assures Lindsey he's seen an apocalypse or two, he'd know if one was right under his nose.
Lindsey corrects him, "Not an apocalypse, the apocalypse. What'd you think, a gong was gonna sound? Time to jump on your horses and fight the big fight? Starting pistol went off a long time ago, boys. You're playing for the bad guys. Every day you sit behind your desk and you learn a little more how to accept the world the way it is. Well, here's the rub. Heroes don't do that. Heroes don't accept the world the way it is. They fight it."
Angel puts it together, "You're saying, everything we do, it's a distraction to keep us busy, from looking under the surface."
Lindsey snaps his fingers, "Ding! We have a winner. The world keeps sliding towards entropy and degradation and what do you do? You sit in your big chair and you sign your checks, just like the Senior Partners planned. The war's here, Angel. And you're already two soldiers down."
In the house in the 'burbs, Gunn is now in Lindsey's role, in the kitchen, along with the wife and son. Trish cooks as Gunn assists Zach with his science studies, quizzing him on the composition of the various layers that make up the planet earth, starting with the outer layer, "Okay, from the top, the earth's outer layer is called?"
Zach answers, "The crust."
Gunn asks, "And what's underneath that?"
Zach answers, "The mantle."
Gunn asks, "And under that? C'mon, you know this one."
Zach is unsure, "The outer core?"
Gunn asks, "And under that?"
Zach answers, more certain this time, "The inner core."
Gunn asks, "And under that?"
Zach ponders it a moment, "Under that .... nothing?"
Gunn smiles, "Nothing but the soft chewy center."
Trish interrupts Gunn's teasing Zach, "Hey, hon? Oven light just went out. I need a bulb from the cellar."
Gunn becomes uneasy, "There should be some in the hall closet."
She insists, "Just regular ones. Little ones are downstairs."
Gunn tries to stall, noting Zach was just going to tell him about the "lithosphere."
Trish walks over to him and rests her hand on his shoulder, "I kinda need it now."
Gunn shifts nervously in his chair.
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