"Angel?"
Someone was shaking him.
"Angel,"
A woman’s voice. Familiar. Smell. Also familiar. Similar to mate’s, but not the same.
"Angel," she called, both her voice and her shaking growing more insistent. But waking was difficult. He was sleeping soundly for the first time in decades, and pulling himself free from the warm dark of sleep was like trying to pull himself free from a tar pit.
"Muh?" He finally rolled toward the person shaking him, opening his eyes just a slit.
*Joyce?*
His eyes flew the rest of the way open.
"Good morning, Angel. Or good afternoon. Or evening. Anyway, hi."
"Joyce?" He sat halfway up and stared at her in sleepy confusion. "Can I help you?"
"Where’s your kitchen?" She asked.
"Huh? My--? Uh, I have a stove right—" he pointed over his shoulder, toward his apartment’s kitchenette.
She gave a worried frown. "I was hoping for something bigger. Does the hotel have a kitchen? For room service or something?"
"Uh…yes it does. But what do you want it for?"
"I want to make breakfast," she answered.
Angel was about to ask why that required a larger kitchen than his, when his mind finally woke up and his eyes widened. "Breakfast? For *all* of them?" He asked.
She nodded.
"That’s an awful lot of breakfast," he said. "You know, I’m the only one who actually lives here. There’s nothing here that’s really suitable for human consumption."
"I ordered some groceries," she replied. "They should be here soon."
That brought him up short. He wanted to ask her "Where the hell is this coming from?" Instead, he softened it to "What gave you this idea?"
She sighed and sat down on the bed beside him. "Do you know what Faith said to me after battle?"
He shook his head.
"She said ‘You were pretty cool out there, Mrs. S. I wish my mom had been like you’. Mind you, this is *after* Buffy has yelled at Xander and I."
"Buffy’s overprotective," Angel said. "I can’t say I’m innocent of it, either. I think it goes with being a Champion. Fact is, you did better against Angelus than I did."
"Thank you," she said. "But that’s beside my point. You’ve known these kids for about five years now, right?"
"Give or take," he answered. He decided not to mention Whistler showing Buffy to him on the day she became the Slayer, and how he had fallen in love with her on that day. His relationship with his (Saints preserve us and Devil brought the tidings) mother-in-law was still a bit precarious.
"Have you ever gotten the impression that they were raised by wolves?" Joyce asked.
*Now* Angel understood what she was getting at. He nodded. "Actually, some of them might have been better off with the wolves," he said. "I hear they’re pretty good parents."
"I know," Joyce said, now nodding her own eager agreement. "Willow came out to me before she did to her own parents. Xander seems to suffer ‘Slaying Bruises’ far less often now that he’s moved out of his parents’ basement. Tara—well, you probably heard—"
Angel nodded. He’d heard of the Maclay’s attempt to--recapture was the only word that he could think of for it—Tara. His own father had been an impossibly demanding and unsupportive man, who perhaps had something in common with Xander’s. A hot temper, a quick hand and a harsh tongue could be understood, even if they couldn’t be condoned. But Mr. Maclay’s deliberate, calculated psychological cruelty to his own daughter would never make sense.
"—and now Faith! I want to take care of them," she declared. "They have a surrogate father in Rupert. I think they’ve half-adopted me as their mother already."
"And they haven’t eaten anything but McDonald’s and chicken wings for two days—" He prompted.
"Time for a proper meal," she finished.
"Sounds good," he said, swinging his legs off the side of the bed and putting his feet down on the floor. "Just let me change my clothes, and I’ll help."
"Oh, you don’t have to—"
"But I want to," he said. "You’ll be surprised, I’m actually pretty good. Just because I don’t *have* to eat doesn’t mean I can’t." He paused, listening. "Better go down front," he said. "Your groceries are here. I’ll meet you in the lobby."
*
The rest of the Scooby Gang woke up to the smell of cooking.
Xander and Faith led the charge down the stairs, followed *very* closely by Gunn and Riley, with the rest following in a straggling parade behind. Giles and Wesley brought up the rear, working very hard to maintain their stoicism in the face of rumbling bellies and the smell of bacon, toast, sausage, coffee—and were those *pancakes*? Then a teapot started to whistle and Wesley’s reserve broke. He rushed down the stairs after the younger members of the group—and Spike—while Giles managed to restrain himself to quickening only to a trot.
The whole mob stormed the kitchen, where there was indeed coffee, and bacon, and toast, and sausage, and even pancakes. There was also milk, and juice, and fruit, and Angel—wearing a "Kiss Me, I’m Irish" apron was working on some scrambled eggs. There was even a pot of water on the stove where two pints of blood were heating like baby formula.
Joyce flipped the last of a stack of pancakes onto a plate, turned to the salivating crowd, and held it up. "Okay," she said. "First lot’s blueberry. Who wants some?"
*
"Ohhhhyeah," Faith moaned in satisfaction as she set her plate on the lobby floor and pushed it away. "I don’t think I’ve *ever* been this full."
"Good," Joyce said. "Everyone else had enough?" She called.
"Everyone else," who were scattered about the lobby—some on the chairs, some on the stairs, some on the floor—grunted or moaned something vaguely affirmative. Only Giles managed something coherent, which was to say "Couldn’t have another bite."
"Good," Angel said, emerging from the kitchen with a convenience store gulp-cup in his hand. "Because there aren’t any bites left." He crossed to the couches and sat down in the only open space, which was beside Tara. "So." he said. "I hate to say it, but I guess it’s time to get down to business."
Surprisingly, it was Cordelia who spoke first. "Okay. Who here thinks that there aren’t still a lot more Scourge where those came from?" She asked, raising her hand.
Riley, Joyce, and a few others who were more ignorant in the ways of demons, had thought exactly that. Seeing the grim-faced certainty of those who were more knowledgeable, they said nothing about it.
"And Tara and I can’t use the dragonfire again anytime soon," Willow said. "Even if we had the power, we still have to do a few ceremonies to get permission."
Several members of the group stared at he quizzically.
"Permission?" Xander asked.
"Dragon is really particular about who calls on him," Willow explained. "If he doesn’t recall giving you his number, he gets cranky."
"Ah," Xander said. "I see—cranky as in slam down the phone and leave you with a headache cranky, or cranky as in explosive, flamey death cranky?"
"Depends on just how cranky he is," Willow shrugged.
"We need reinforcements," Riley said.
"I agree," Giles said. "Do you have any allies that you can muster?" He asked Angel.
"I do," Gunn said. "My boys’d be *happy* to go out and whup some ass, rather than sit at home and wait for the army of demons to come to us."
"We might also be able to muster an army of demons of our own," Wesley suggested. "If any cause can get demons to fight beside humans, it’s resistance against the Scourge." He turned to Angel. "We should talk to Lorne."
Angel nodded. "We should," he said. "But the Scourge isn’t what I’m really worried about right now." He could feel their stares of amazement. "We’ve been thinking about Angelus all wrong," he explained. "We’ve been acting like he’s a super-vampire of some sort. Just like he always was, except maybe a little moreso. Undiluted or upgraded, or whatever, and that’s not how it is."
"So he’s new and improved," Faith said. "What’s the big whoop? He can still be killed."
"Perhaps not," Wesley said. "Xander staked him in the heart, and he was set on fire twice. Once with magic, once with a holy object. It seems the traditional methods of killing vampires are insufficient for a pure vampire demon."
"That’s just it," Angel said. "We keep focusing on the ‘vampire’ part of it, and forget about the Pure Demon." He tapped his temple. "He gave me a vision when he had me pinned to the wall. It burned out our connection. I can’t feel him anymore. But I was able to sense one very important thing before it went:"
He paused to choose his words, but no one interrupted. They were all paying rapt attention. "Whatever humanity he might have had from me is fading. Soon there’ll be no more jokes, no more games—he’ll be just a primal force of destruction." He took a deep, unnecessary breath. "He’s an Old One now," he said. "And I don’t think he’s even close to his full potential—or his final form."
Faith was the first to break the silence this time. "Shiiiit." She breathed.
"I’ll meet your ‘shit’ and raise you a ‘Bugger me’," Giles agreed. The people who knew what that meant stared at him in shock. "Did this vision show you anything else?" He asked.
Angel described the vision in detail, and by the end none of his listeners were surprised that whatever part of his mind it was that was connected to Angelus had been destroyed. Bridges burned. Or collapsed under too much weight.
"So…" Buffy began. "He’s an Old One." The words tasted strange in her mouth when spoken in the present tense. She’d heard them often enough from Giles, but they’d always seemed…remote. An ancient, forgotten nightmare that overshadowed her own nightmares of vampires and demons. The world’s nightmare. It had always been a given that, if the Old Ones got in, the battle was already lost. "He’s an Old One," she repeated. "And he has a novel plan for destroying the world. Do we have a tactical on it?" she asked. "Could it work?"
"We don’t know," Giles answered. "But we have to assume it can."
"An Old One," Xander said, shaking his head. "How do you fight something like that?" His head stopped in mid-shake, and turned toward Anya. One by one, everyone else’s followed.
She looked back at all of them blankly. "What?"
"You told us we should learn to ask you about these things," Xander said with deliberate patience. "Well, we’re asking."
"You expect *me* to know how to fight an Old One?"
"It’s worth a shot," Xander replied evenly.
"Sorry," she said. "Your shot missed. I was only a demon for twelve hundred years. The Old Ones have been gone about a hundred times longer than that."
"Damn," Angel said. "If only the Oracles were still alive."
"The who?" Buffy asked.
"The Oracles," he explained. "Spokesbeings for the Powers That Be. Sometimes, when I needed extra information, I could go to them. But a demon killed them last spring."
The rest of the people present looked a bit more crestfallen at this pre-closed option, but Wesley suddenly brightened. "Of course! The Eyes of the Seer!" He blurted.
"Beg your pardon?" Angel asked.
"We need a channel to the Powers That Be," Wesley explained eagerly. "And we have one." He waved his hand at Cordelia. "But the connection is one-way, and she has no control over it. However, I have a spell—its name translates as ‘The Eyes of the Seer’—that would allow her to call back, so to speak."
Most of the rest of the group just stared at him. Joyce spoke for them all when she said "Where did you get something like that, and what on Earth made you think that you’d ever need such a thing?"
"Nothing did," Giles interrupted eagerly. "Sometimes sorcerers can be like bloody kids collecting football cards: they’ll probably never have any actual use for it, but they want it because it’s cool."
"I’ll have to look it up," Wesley said. "I don’t remember the ritual off the top of my head. But I do remember that it starts at dawn—"
"When the gods’ light returns to the Earth, revealing what was hidden in the dark," Giles agreed eagerly.
"Whoa!" Cordelia interrupted, waving her hands. "Whoa, whoa, whoa! Vision Girl should have some input into this, don’t you think?"
The two grinning wizards immediately sobered. "Of course, Cordelia," Giles said.
"I hate to take your new toy away," She continued. "Actually, no, I don’t. Is this necessary? I mean *really* necessary? You can’t find a way to fight these things in one of your old books, or on some web site that only Willow or Oz can find for us?"
Willow answered before either ex-Watcher could. "There really isn’t," she said, shaking her head. "We got lucky with the Mayor—if he hadn’t tried to cover it up, we never would have made the connection with the volcano. None of the few books that mentioned Olvikan said anything about volcanoes."
Faith swallowed hard, and she suddenly felt her eyes begin to sting. Lester. Poor Lester. She’d almost been able to forget—for a while. He was her one true innocent kill: Deputy Mayor Finch had been an accident (and now, she knew for a fact that he’d been dirty), and the courier was in league with demons. But Lester was just an archaeologist, and it turned out that killing him had been not only pointless, but counter-productive.
Cordelia sighed. "All right, all right. Dawn it is."
Wesley rose to his feet. "We’d best start researching and gathering supplies, then."
Gunn also rose, and started for the door. "I’ll head home and rally the troops."
Faith sprang up and started after him. "Mind if I tag along?"
Angel started toward door to the basement. The sun hadn’t quite set yet, and he needed to take the sewer route. "I’ll go to Caritas and talk to Lorne, see what he can muster for us."
"I’ll come with," Buffy offered.
"Wait!" Willow called as the group started to split up in a dozen different directions.
Everyone obeyed, stopping and turning back to hear what she had to say.
"Do you think you can make it back here before midnight?" she asked. "We’ve found a spell to treat Oz, but it requires that the whole ‘tribe’ be present."
It was a sign of just how bizarre the past few days had been, even by Scooby Gang standards, that they all just checked their watches, said "Okay," and continued on their way.
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