The tide was at its lowest, and the harbor was deserted at this hour: too late for fishermen, too early for cargo sailors. Angel couldn't eject himself from the car seat following Buffy, but through the open door, he easily saw the object of her panic.

There was a tiny boat just off the coast. It was a paddleboat in the shape of a large swan. A paddleboat, Angel thought in wonder. Two knotted ropes secured it to adjoining piers, and it didn't move much. It floated in about the same spot where the cargo room of the Quintessa would have been.

Fred, Gunn, and Cordelia were seated in the boat. They each held large, lit candles. Willow stood near the head of the swan. She was either yelling something or just screaming, and light played all around her.

"Oh, no," Tara cried, and launched herself only a heartbeat behind Buffy.

Giles stayed only an instant longer, shouting, "Foolish, arrogant..." with the rest lost in the wind.

Four things happened at the exact same time. The ropes securing the paddleboat vanished in blue flames, flames that licked the entire surface of the water. Dust bits gathered by a miniature tornado coalesced, first into a shape that looked vaguely human, then into a solid human being who fell out of the air and knocked Willow deeply into the boat. Giles and Tara reached the water's edge, joined hands together, and invisibly pulled the boat toward themselves. And Buffy metamorphosized into a huge fire-breathing demon, shouted a threat, and changed back into herself.

Angel's shoulders grew more singed as, again and again, he arrested the automatic reflex to run into that sunlight. Unable to locate a blanket, he completely tore the cloth cover off the back seat of the car.

As the paddleboat reached the shore, Giles turned into a water demon. It looked different, but it said the same thing, and then there was Giles again, finishing the spell phrase he had started before changing.

"Tara!" Buffy yelled, loudly enough for Angel to hear her from the car. "Can you make that thing corporeal again so--whoever they brought back can kill it?"

Windblown red hair emerged from the head of the boat. "Did you see?" Willow's face was torn, but triumphant. "I did it again!"

Buffy and Tara exchanged a look.

Tara caught Willow's tiny hand, and as power crackled around both of the girls, a huge windy monster appeared in front of them. Right in the boat, in fact.

Angel had himself covered with every scrap of cloth in the car, and he ran toward the scene in the harbor as quickly as he could as his legs were tangled with every other step.

"He has to kill it! We can help, though!"

Gunn and Fred worked as one person. Gone was the trembling child-woman; this Fred wielded the sword she must have brought almost as well as Gunn did, and together they trapped the beast and delivered it blow after blow.

Cordelia knocked it into the bottom of the boat and reached for another's hand. She pressed a knife into it, said something that Angel couldn't make out, and guided the hand into the beast's throat. It screamed, and vanished.

Five people tumbled out of the abused paddleboat just as Angel finally reached the edge of the harbor's water. Fred, Gunn, a bedraggled Willow and a disheveled Cordelia, and, leaning heavily on Cordelia's shoulder, Doyle .

Doyle didn't give anyone time for introductions as he stumbled out on to the sand. He seemed dazed, as dazed as Buffy had been when she climbed Glory’s decaying tower months after the threat had gone. "The Lister? They're safe? The Beacon?" He changed into Brachen form--no, he had been in Brachen form all along--and looked down the nearest pier, then back at Cordelia. "Too bad we'll never know if this is a face you could learn to love." He started to run.

Cordelia went in right after him, but she was not quite fast enough. He hit the water and sank. She jumped off the end. Angel jumped in the water right after her, shedding all the cloth as the water shielded him from the sun. He made no attempt to swim.

As he passed Cordelia on the way down, Angel tugged her sleeve and pointed up. He put his hand on his throat, trying to communicate that he didn't breathe, and pointed up again. Miraculously, Cordelia actually obeyed, heading for the surface.

The water was not terribly deep, and enough light filtered to the bottom for Angel to find Doyle. The half-Brachen was crouched in one of the sandbars, not moving. Angel thrashed over to him, slinging both arms over his back, then made his way along the bottom to the pier, rather than trying to swim up. If he had prayed, or if he had thought at all in that moment, he would have prayed that it would not be too long for Doyle to go without air.

When he was only a few feet under the surface, Angel boosted Doyle to his shoulders and made his way out of the water that way, Doyle's head as far up as he could manage. "We're down here," Angel yelled as loudly as he could. He spread his friend flat under the pier.

It sounded as if there was a battle going on above. Was that Lilah's voice? And Gavin's? Crap and...

Angel concentrated on the form below his hands. He had a sudden, vivid image of another form in the same position, a slight, blonde form reviving under CPR. Only that had been Xander, who had pushed Angel aside to tend to his best friend. This time Angel was tending to his best friend, and he could not fail.

Doyle coughed. Angel helped him to sit up. The Brachen face receded into human. It held the most intense confusion Angel had seen in a long while, and the vision tore at a piece of his heart that he had thought frozen forever.

"What...where...what is this place?"

"You're under the harbor." Angel searched for something else to say. What do you say when your friend was dead and then was alive? Sorry we took away your redemption and forced you right into the battle? Sorry we dragged you out of Heaven? Faith's face and voice came into Angel's head as he remembered telling her to go ahead and apologize. He started to try. "I'm so sorry..."

"What happened? The Beacon?"

"You stopped it, Doyle."

"Oh." His face turned from confused to just blank. "I did, didn't I? They said I was done. That I was released."

"Yes." Angel turned his face away. The Oracles had called him selfish for wanting Doyle back in a way that Doyle wouldn't remember. This was worse.

"That was so long ago."

"What do you remember?"

Instead of answering that, Doyle waited a moment, then asked, "How long has it been?"

Crap again. "Almost two years. A year, ten months, five..." Angel stopped himself, noting that his time sense wasn't ordinarily any better than that of a human. Had he been...no, he had never hoped that Doyle might be alive after all. He had seen his friend die, and long since resigned himself to death’s permanence—and he should be angry and upset with Cordelia, for Doyle’s sake. He wasn’t quite.

There was a crash from above. Angel helped Doyle get to his feet, and the two rushed out from under the pier--or Doyle rushed; Angel reached the exact spot where the sun met the sand and jerked back, burned for the second time that day.

Fred, Giles, Gunn, Cordelia, and Buffy were in a kind of battle formation turned away from the pier, and there were car tracks in the sand. Tara, a little ways off, was shooting lightning bolts at the road as she ran ahead, yelling something.

Angel was impressed. He had thought the whole throwing electricity thing was just something out of mythology.

"Everyone in the car, back to the hotel where we’ll make plans." Buffy snapped, loudly enough to turn everyone's head. "Tara! We'll help you, and we are not leaving L.A. without Willow. Now come on."