The Solution, an Angel story with Highlander elements, by Glacis. Rated NC17.

Note: Spoilers for the final season of Buffy, the Angel canon (particularly the episodes ‘The Girl in Question’ and ‘Not Fade Away), and all the Highlander canon through the movie Endgame (ignoring the second movie, because it’s better that way; even Mulder wouldn’t buy the ‘Immortals are aliens’ idea. Since there are three versions of Endgame and Immortal canon is contradictory at best, I’m using what I need and ignoring the rest). Pairings include Angel/Lindsey and Giles/Methos. With thanks to those who asked for it.

Lorne didn’t walk as much as he staggered through the doorway after murdering Lindsey. His fingers were still curled as if permanently marked by the weight of the gun. His eyes were wide, unblinking, and his normal healthy green flush faded to a more sickly yellowish shade.

Unseen, the shade of a man leaned against the wall, watching Lorne’s unsteady progress. When the front door shut behind the desolate figure, the man shook his head and whispered, “Feelin’ guilty, then? Aye, and so you should.”

Pushing himself away from the wall, the ghostly outline filled in, features sharpening until a green-eyed, dark-haired, sharp-boned face was clear. He stepped through the doorway, nose wrinkling at the carnage before his eyes fell upon the least-bloody, most-recently dead body slumped against the near wall.

“Ya heard him sing, Lorne.” The whisper sounded like wind in the still room. “You’ve seen his soul. You were his friend.” The words were harsh.

His feet stopped at the side of the crumpled figure, and he slowly knelt, one hand reaching out to push back a lock of hair fallen across the pale face. The corpse had an expression of surprise and betrayal on his face.

“You understood him,” the ghost continued more gently, “and ya knew better. Knew it when you said ye’d do it, knew better’n Angel when it comes down to it, and ya should’n’a done it.” His hand fell away, and the hair fell back in place, covering the emptiness in Lindsey’s eyes. “But Fate’s a bitch, an’ don’t I know it. When She demands, ya do what ya have ta do.”

Beneath the gaping neckline of the ruined shirt, faint lines appeared on the dead man’s skin. Filling, curling, looping to form archaic symbols of protection that rose from beneath the skin to gradually darken, painting a cobalt torque around his neck, scrolling over his torso to pool over his heart, snaking around his arms, his legs, curving across his groin around to the small of his back, twining up his spine to meet itself at the nape of his neck. As the runes wrote themselves on Lindsey’s cold body, the skin around them took on a silver sheen, seen more in the shadows than the planes. In a moment the strange transformation was complete.

Seconds later, the corpse twitched violently. Lindsey gasped, a single great swallow of air, and jolted upright.

His eyes were no longer empty.

Dragon slaying hadn’t been quite what Angel expected when he decided to make his final run against the windmills of the demon gods. But there was a certain grim hilarity in the fact that he’d signed away his own hope of humanity, led all his human partners into certain death, had the snot kicked out of his nonhuman partners, and set himself up as the prime target of the leaders of hell on earth, only to find himself acting out every little boy’s Sir Galahad fantasy.

Or maybe it was Saint George. It had been a very long time since Angel was a church-going Catholic, and he been too distracted with sex and whisky to pay much attention to it even then.

Still, it was fun, in a death-defying sort of way, and wasn’t that a weird thing for a dead man to think? He swung his sword, ducked a clawed foot, nearly got impaled on a spiked wing, and struck like a viper, pushing hard, nearly getting wrenched off his feet as his sword stuck fast in the dragon’s heart.

Wincing as he was instantly covered in dragon bodily fluids and practically smothered in dragon corpse, Angel reflected that nobody in fairy tales ever mentioned how damned messy it was.

Or how horribly it smelled.

Although it didn’t taste too bad… but then, after having Hamilton for dinner, with a full jolt of ‘power of ancient evil’ to give it that added kick, dragon blood was practically a treat. Hamilton had been high octane, but he’d tasted worse than week-old rat.

As Angel kicked his way free of the weight of the dead dragon, a mixed phalanx of homicidal demons swarmed him, and he gave up thinking in favor of fighting.

Probably better that way.

The world slowed around Gunn until it felt as if he were fighting underwater. Illyria swept around him like a blue-streaked Fred-shaped tornado of doom, making him feel even slower, but it didn’t bother him.

Nothing bothered him, because he was numb, and getting number with every heartbeat.

He knew he was dead, really, but he couldn’t stop fighting. Even when a freaky-looking goblin with teeth bigger than Gunn’s head ripped his throat open, finishing the work the vamps at the Hellspawn’s campaign headquarters had begun when they’d half-gutted him, Gunn didn’t stop fighting.

It was only when a hand wrapped around his wrist that he realized his body lay on its back in the alley, blank eyes and slack mouth and ripped throat and cut belly all opened up into the rain; only then that his spirit stopped fighting.

He looked from the long, pale hand trapping him to the long, strong arm attached to it, further up to Wesley’s face, showing him a smile he hadn’t seen in way too long, and eyes that weren’t as sad as they’d always been lately. Gunn grinned back.

“Come to help out?” he asked, though he already knew the answer.

“Our part in this fight is over,” Wes told him softly. “It’s time to go.”

“Go where?” Gunn asked, turning from the battle to walk beside Wesley, who was still holding his arm. It didn’t feel bad, felt kinda right, actually.

Then another hand came up and took his other arm, and he looked down to see Fred smiling up at him.

Fred.

Not Illyria pretending to be Fred.

But Fred.

Gunn looked from Wesley, smiling at him from one side, to Fred, smiling at him from the other, and felt the numbness melt away.

Only there wasn’t any pain behind it. There was only peace.

And Fred.

And Wes.

Gunn wrapped an arm around each of his best-loved friends, and together they walked away from the war. He didn’t know where they were going, and he didn’t care. But they’d all three lived through hell when they were alive. Now they were dead, they deserved a little heaven. Didn’t matter where they were going.

It had to be better than where they’d been.

“Go where?” Eve asked, not caring that Angel didn’t give her a reply, nor even wait to hear her question.

The beams above her head broke, showering her with rubble. The floor below her feet ruptured, pitching her to her hands and knees. The air tasted of grit and brimstone. The walls screamed as they cracked.

She’d given up everything for Lindsey, and Angel had killed him. She didn’t know how, or why, or when, but she knew he had. With Lindsey gone, she had no one. Nothing. Nowhere to go.

She didn’t bother to scream when the weight of the building came down upon her, crushing the life she’d fought to keep from her frail mortal body.

There was no one to hear, anyway.

It had been a hell of a day, and not in a bad way, Spike thought as he punched into and through the gut of yet another baddie. His slimy hand clamped around the thing’s spine and ripped it out the front of its gut, and it croaked before it could yell.

Yeah, a hell of a day. He mused over events, letting his mind wander as he waded into yet another fight, fists and fangs first… Helluva day. Sign up for a suicide mission… he ducked a mace swung at his head, kicked out to break the demon’s arm in two places, caught the mace as it was dropped and used it to chop the attacker’s head off… Drink some of the best beer and whiskey he’d had in years… he head-butted a blobby grayish thing, then broke off the mace in its skull. When that didn’t stop it, he jammed the broken end of the mace handle up the general vicinity of its arse, then chuckled when that did kill it. Figured the dozy thing’d keep its brain in its hind end.

Something sharp slammed into him from the side and he rolled with it, coming out of his impromptu somersault to snap-kick the demon behind a knee, following that with a two-fisted punch to the base of the spine that took it out of commission. Humming lightly, an old English lullaby he hadn’t heard since he was a boy, Spike plowed back into the melee and resumed his happy rundown of the day’s events.

Ah, yes, a discerning crowd hanging on his every word as he declaimed, his poetry finding a place a century after his death it never found in his human life. Maybe that had been his problem, he thought, wrapping one arm around a demon’s head and wrenching it around to break its neck. I was just born before my time.

He ducked a stake, grabbed the arm holding it and folded it back on its owner, who died upon impalement with a sputter and a squawk. A moment later, looking around rapidly for the next attack, Spike realized he was alone on the street.

Well, nearly alone.

Okay, completely alone, as Angel walked away into the night, bloody damned trench coat flapping like some kind of poufy supermodel. Spike growled, realized he wasn’t vamped out any more, and hunched his shoulders as he waited for his face to shift and his fangs to lengthen.

Then waited some more.

And some more.

A rhythmic thud sounded in his ears. It made him twitchy. He shook his head, growled a little deeper, and scowled, wondering why the hell he wasn’t vamping out.

Eventually, when he was absolutely alone in the middle of the alley surrounded by a pile of demon corpses half a mile high, it dawned on Spike that the reason he couldn’t vamp out was because he wasn’t a vampire anymore.

He was a human.

The flippin’ thud was his own heart pumping. Been so long since he’d heard it he’d forgotten what it sounded like.

Looked like he was the Shansuey thingy after all. He felt a dim glow of triumph over Angel, completely human lips curling into a sneer.

Then, in the distance, he heard a rumble. More demons. He tensed, licking blunt teeth where fangs used to be. His eyes widened. It was a little disconcerting to feel the blood drain from his face.

“Well, shit,” he muttered, “Helluva time for this to happen!”

Then he turned and ran like hell was on his heels. Because it was.

“Angel,” was the first word from Lindsey’s mouth after he returned to life, as it had been when he fell into death.

“Not quite, but I’m workin’ on it,” the apparition in front of him informed him solemnly, his tone belied by the twinkle in his eye.

Lindsey blinked. One hand came up to rub his chest, fingers catching in the holes the bullets made when they’d cut into him. Only the shirt was torn. His chest was intact.

“Ouch,” he said experimentally, then nodded slightly. Yeah. It had hurt, like a bitch, but that was fading. But it shouldn’t hurt at all, ‘cause he was dead. Wasn’t he?

“Not quite,” the ghost said again, with a beaming grin that made Lindsey want to hit him repeatedly with something very heavy. “Ya tried. It didn’t take.”

When his brain finally stopping spinning long enough for Lindsey to try to make sense of the senseless, he realized he knew the man. Or had known of the man who was now the ghost.

Only he didn’t look like a ghost. He was nearly corporeal, not as misty as most ghosts Lindsey’d met. His skin was so silver he looked as if he was made of the stuff, and he had arcane symbols etched into the surface in a deep royal blue.

“Doyle?” Lindsey asked, steadying his voice with sheer willpower. “What happened here?”

“Ta me or ta you?” Doyle asked.

Lindsey scowled at him. “Both.”

“Me,” Doyle said airily, waving one hand in a dismissive way, “I’ve been pinch-hittin’ for the Powers that Be. Since the last batch got slaughtered they’ve been a bit light o’ help on their side of the battle. But m’ time’s nearly done, and it’s your turn ta bat.”

Lindsey blinked at him, then scowled harder. Damned ghost – spirit – Power – whatever wasn’t making any sense.

“How?” he bit out. “I’m dead.”

“Nah, y’re not dead. Y’re an immortal.”

“I’m NOT working for Wolfram and Hart!” Lindsey yelped.

Doyle snickered, then held out his hands in a placating gesture as Lindsey tensed up, preparatory to leaping up and beating the crap out of him. Not that such a course of action would necessarily work on a ghost, but Lindsey was quite willing to try.

It had been a hell of a day. In a ‘really nasty hell dimension’ sort of way. Lindsey was tired, and sore, and feeling betrayed by everybody, and feeling stupid for feeling betrayed, and he wanted to know why he wasn’t dead.

“Balance in the universe,” Doyle piped up, reading Lindsey’s mind again.

Lindsey subsided with a growl and waited for Doyle to get on with it. Doyle, ever the storyteller, sank down beside him, hovering slightly above the surface of the floor, his hands sketching the air as he explained.

“It’s all about balance, really. The Powers that Be been takin’ too many hits, losin’ too many helpers, whilst the Senior Partners, sort o’ the other side of the coin if ye will, ‘ve been racking up the wins. ‘S not how it’s s’posed to be.”

“So why don’t they do something about it?” Lindsey broke in.

His head ached, he was in desperate need of a shower to slough off the blood dried to his skin, and he needed to hunt Angel down and kill him. Doyle slanted him an amused look.

“Oh, lad, but they did,” he said softly.

“They made me immortal to balance out the immortals the Senior Partners have made?” Lindsey was appalled. He had more important things to do with his life than return to an existence as the lap dog of higher powers, regardless of which side they were on.

Like hunting down Angel. And killing him. Slowly. With a whole lot of taunting. And lots of torture. A muffled snort of laughter from Doyle brought Lindsey back to the present.

“What?” he huffed.

“You sure it’s killin’ ye’ll be wantin’ with Angel?” Doyle asked, then hurried on before Lindsey could find a way of killing a man who was already dead, who wasn’t a vampire. “No matter now. Nah, the Powers didna make you immortal. You were born that way, or hatched, or somethin’. Now y’re part of a larger Game. I’m not the one to be tellin’ you about that. A teacher’s on his way, whether he knows it or not, and that’ll be his job for the doin’. But there are a few things ya need to know.”

A few? Lindsey thought, then started as Doyle’s cool fingertip touched the base of his throat.

“These, for starters,” Doyle said.

Lindsey looked down to find his skin wreathed in runes. Again. Only these were much more elegant, much more ornate, and stank of much more magic than those he’d created himself. They also glowed through his clothing. He blinked.

“Wha’?” he mumbled. He’d meant to ask ‘what the hell?’ but his tongue was numb from shock.

They were beautiful. Unearthly, and beautiful.

“They render ya invisible to the Senior Partners’ senses, their own or their spies,” Doyle told him matter-of-factly, “and they’ll not be takin’ them off ya, as they rose from yer soul. They’re part of ya, not imposed by external magic. Y’r work’s not done. You are part of the team, no matter what Angel may think, the team of the Light. By your choice.”

He paused, letting his words sink in, and Lindsey felt his heart sink along with them. Stuck, and not a fucking thing he could do about it.

“The Powers have a plan,” Doyle said softly.

When he didn’t add anything to his cryptic little announcement, Lindsey asked with a slightly frantic edge to his voice, “Like what? Well? What is it?”

That slight edge widened considerably when Doyle rose to his feet and began to fade before Lindsey’s eyes.

“Where the hell are you going?” Lindsey yelped, pulling himself to his feet.

Then he froze in place as a second ghostly form, this one shimmering in gold with amber runes on her skin, took shape next to Doyle. Brown eyes glowing, smile sparkling in death as it had in life, Cordelia ignored Lindsey completely and took Doyle’s hand in her own.

“Time to go, sweetie,” she said, and Doyle beamed at her.

Lindsey wanted to puke. Or hit somebody. Before he could do either, Doyle turned back to him.

“It’s your turn now,” Doyle told him in a disgustingly cheerful voice.

Then he leaned in and, before Lindsey could gather his wits to escape, kissed him hard on the lips.

The touch burned from Lindsey’s mouth to his throat, shooting along the outlines of the tattoos stretching over his body, down the front of him and up the back, blinding him, overwhelming him, paralyzing him with fire, leaving him shaking. When the haziness cleared from his eyes, Doyle was gone. So was Cordelia.

Lindsey licked his lips, then took a deep breath and waited for his trembling limbs to calm. When he could move without his knees giving out, he brushed the worst of the dried blood off his shirt, shaking his head as two mangled bullets fell from the mangled material to the floor.

“Too fuckin’ weird for words,” he muttered.

Giving the carnage around him one last glare, he picked up the sword he’d used to kill so many demons, and went looking for Angel.

He deliberately didn’t think of Lorne.

That particular betrayal hurt too damned much.

The end, when it came, took Giles aback. He’d not-quite-joked that they were all going to die, but that so few of them actually had came as a surprise in the aftermath.

Post-apocalyptic life was appropriately dull.

After all, when one has faced ultimate evil (a few times), seen an entire town collapse into hell, survived by the skin of one’s teeth, and lost nearly all one’s professional acquaintances in the course of less than a year, it tends to make moving back to England and settling in the country a less-than-exciting life change.

He’d take that. He’d had enough excitement to last several lifetimes.

Then Buffy got bored.

Of course, he wasn’t technically her watcher any longer. Even after the rest of the Potentials became Slayers, Giles found himself relegating most of the actual watching to Andrew and Faith, with Willow and Kennedy’s sometime assistance. Buffy wanted a holiday from life, and Giles didn’t blame her.

He also didn’t trust her on her own for longer than a day before more hell broke loose. So, technically her watcher or no, surrogate father or no, half-trusted friend or no, when Buffy went to France, then on to Italy, Giles followed.

There he proceeded to spend many late nights bored out of his mind in dance clubs watching as Buffy worked off a lifetime full of frustration with every pretty man who could keep up.

Few could. One night, she found one who did.

By the time Buffy found Mac, or Mac found Buffy, Giles had surpassed his boredom threshold several times over and was spending his evenings going to blues bars before wasting the late hours of the night (and early hours of the morning) in the dance clubs. Watching. He dug out his guitar, warmed up his voice, and took out his own frustration on the rather encouragingly enthusiastic denizens of several intimate clubs throughout France, then continued on with his newly rediscovered hobby in Italy. It found him a few casual friends outside the flashier arena of Buffy’s hunting grounds, and gave him a needed way to hold on to his own sanity, or what was left of it.

Then one night the two halves of his evening routine collided spectacularly.

Mac was a nice enough lad, a bit broody and, on the surface of it, too old for her. He was a Scot with a typical Scot’s distrust of the English, but he got along well with Giles, mainly because Giles never had to play protective papa with him over Buffy. Why would he? Buffy could certainly hold her own, as she’d proven time and again. At least he wasn’t another vampire. After Angel, then Angelus, then Angel again, followed by much too much of Spike, a nice, normal, human male was perfectly fine with Giles.

Besides, he absolutely loved to dance, and he could actually keep up with Buffy on the floor. Giles was content.

Until the early hours of a rather dank March morning, after a long night of loud music, when Buffy went into the ladies’ room and Mac ducked out into the back alley.

Every instinct Giles had screamed at him. There was an odd sort of magic in the air, and it tasted of danger. Moving without conscious decision, Giles ducked out right behind Mac.

He was just in time to see Mac pull a katana out of a coat that surely couldn’t have held such a weapon and strike a defensive pose against a hulking brute wielding a medieval sword. Giles automatically categorized the blade as an Oakeshott type X with a classic wheel pommel and a practical long guard. The stranger raised his blade, mumbled something incomprehensible at Mac, and attacked.

Two incredibly swift moves later, Mac sliced the stranger’s head from his shoulders.

Giles found his feet rooted to the ground as a strange mist rose from the freshly-made corpse’s neck, twining around it before appearing to strike Mac from all directions. Lightning crackled around the corpse, now sprawled on the ground, and from the deadened eyes of the decapitated head, staring blankly in Giles’ direction, before driving deeply into Mac’s body. Mac, in reaction, threw his head back and arched his spine until it looked as if it would snap. He dropped the katana as his body shook, his feet actually leaving the ground as he thrashed under the assault of the otherworldly lightning.

As Giles peered through the darkness looking for other potential sword-wielding threats, his mind cataloged the various forms of demonic possession that might cause such a result. Several things were close, but none were quite right. He was still trying to figure it out, creeping forward cautiously, eyes and ears alert, when the crackling light show stopped.

Mac sighed, picked up his katana and wiped it carefully with a handkerchief before returning it to the invisible space-warping sheath in his coat. Giles melted back into the shadows as Mac passed him, returning to the club. If he noticed Giles, he made no sign of it.

Looking from the noise and light of the club to the dead man in the shadows, Giles’ conscience fought his curiosity for a moment before he followed Mac.

Buffy was back out on the dance floor, and Mac was moving with her, the heat generated between the two enough to power a small city. Giles knew this evening wouldn’t end for a long time, and when it did, it would be with a private party for two. His instinct told him to warn Buffy, but also urged him to gather whatever information he could before he told her what he’d seen.

With that aim in mind, he turned back to the alley, then stopped dead in his tracks. A black SUV had pulled up, disgorging five young people, all wearing such uniform dark clothing he couldn’t tell their individual gender. With an efficiency that bespoke a great deal of practice, they bundled up the corpse, head, discarded sword, and cleansed the spilled blood and scorched pavement until no signs remained of the mortal duel that had so recently occurred.

The entire operation was completed in less than two minutes.

Giles blinked at the scoured scene before him for a moment, then tensed. Someone stood at his right shoulder. Not feeling any sense of threat, Giles carefully turned until he faced the newcomer.

He recognized the man as a fellow musician he’d played with in a particularly classy bar in Paris. Covering his second shock of the evening with a deliberately neutral expression, Giles said softly, “Hello, Joe.”

“Hey, G,” Joe replied as quietly. “Don’t suppose we could pretend you didn’t see anything?” His whiskey rasp was hopeful.

For half a second Giles actually considered it, then he smiled ruefully. “Would you feel any better about it if I said it wasn’t the strangest thing I’d ever seen?”

Joe’s eyes lit up with curiosity. “Let me buy you a drink.”

They talked for the rest of the night. Long after Mac and Buffy left, long after Buffy bounced back home with a grin on her face and fell into bed without wondering where her watcher might be, Giles told tales of demons to Joe, and Joe told tales of Immortals to Giles. By the time they finished a late breakfast, the casual acquaintances were fast friends.

A month later he sat with Joe at yet another raucous disco, drinking whisky and telling war stories, keeping an eye on Buffy as Joe kept an eye on Mac. A slight disturbance at the entrance to the club caught his attention as two men came in, making their way through the crowd. Giles bit off the rest of his sentence to glare at them.

“Buddies of yours?” Joe asked with interest.

“Sometime allies, at best,” Giles murmured, eyes narrowing. Angel and Spike. Up to no good, no doubt, and sniffing after Buffy. He reminded himself for the millionth time that she was a big girl, the seasoned Slayer, and she didn’t need him to stake any old enemies… boyfriends… for her, no matter how much he might enjoy it. “The two men at the bar.”

“Bleach blond and broody brunet in leather?” Joe sounded amused, now. Giles shot him a glance.

“Two vampires, known as Spike and Angel, also known as Angelus. Buffy has… issues with each.”

The suggestion of amusement on Joe’s face bloomed into full-out laughter. When he regained control of himself under Giles unamused stare, he attempted to explain. “They might be here for Mac, ya know,” he offered.

Giles looked a question at Joe, and Joe went on. “Couple hundred years ago. You know Mac loves the ladies and the ladies love Mac. Plus he’s got a thing for blondes.” He nodded to the center of the floor, where Buffy spun and Mac circled her. “Turns out ol’ broody, yours, not mine,” he clarified at Giles’ instinctive look at Angel, “had a blonde girlfriend. Mac had a fling with her, and her crazy lady friend-”

“Drusilla! And Darla,” Giles interjected softly.

“Yeah, that was them. Anyway, he made both the ladies pretty happy, pissed off Angelus and Spike, then spent a decade or so playing cat ‘n’ mouse with those guys. They never caught up with him, then they dropped off the playing field. We logged the action and passed the info over to your bunch. Looks like the hens have come home to roost now.”

Fighting his own rather nasty-spirited grin at the thought of Angelus’ discomfiture, Giles said, “I remember something about that. I never did hear all the details.”

“That’s ‘cause we never told you everything,” Joe winked.

Giles let his grin slip out. “So tell me now.”

As the watchers watched Angel and Spike watching Buffy and Mac, Joe did.

Thankfully, the vampires were preoccupied with something else, and they left without ever approaching Buffy. Giles was still laughing when he dropped Joe off and went home to bed.

He laughed even harder the next day, when Joe told him the Watchers had sent the head of the Immortal Mac killed to the vampires. Apparently Angel needed it for a client. Joe’d added Mac’s regards to the ‘gift.’

The next evening, Andrew told Giles that Spike and Angel had come by the apartment he shared with Buffy. Andrew hadn’t mentioned it to her, and wondered if he should.

“No,” Giles told him firmly. “She’s finally healing. Let her get on with her life.”

Words to live by for all of them. If only life would let them.

A week later, on the twentieth of May, the telephone rang.

“Hello?” he answered, staring at the unfamiliar number on his caller id display.

“Hello, Mr. Giles. This is Charles Barringer, of the law firm Wolfram and Hart. I am contacting you on behalf of one of our senior management, at his bequest.”

Giles didn’t like the sound of this. “What happened?” he asked bluntly. “And to whom?”

The officious voice on the other end of the line continued. “I regret to inform you, Mr. Giles, that Wesley Wyndham-Pryce has been killed in the line of duty. You are the designated Council contact on his file.”

It took a moment for Giles to blink away his shock. He pulled his glasses from his face and pinched the bridge of his nose hard between forefinger and thumb, grief unexpectedly jolting through him. Wesley had begun an idiot, but he’d seasoned nicely according to reports. He was also the only other living Watcher left from the Council besides Giles.

Scratch that. He had been the only other living Watcher. Now there was only Giles. The extent of the loss was embodied by the fact that one of the enemy was telling Giles about Wesley’s death.

Clearing his throat, he asked softly, “Have arrangements been made?” Surely someone in the Los Angeles group, Angel or Harmony or Gunn or Fred or someone, had taken care of the details.

“No,” was the somber answer. “Mr. Wyndham-Pryce made his wishes clear. You and only you are to be responsible for taking care of the details.”

That made sense, Giles supposed. Wesley trusted him to make sure his body was properly disposed of; none of the others were as aware as Giles of what uses a corpse could be turned toward, and Wesley would want to ensure that didn’t happen. Giles took a deep breath.

“I’ll fly out tomorrow morning.”

He hung up, stared at the phone for a long moment, then turned on his laptop. Thanks to Willow’s tutelage, he was much more confident in its use than he’d once been. Logging on to a private message board, he scanned the most recent posts from his network of informants.

“Dear God,” he whispered. The battle had been intense.

Fred was dead, before the battle, to demonic possession. The demon who’d possessed her had also been killed. Gunn was lost in the fighting, as Wesley had been. The headquarters of Wolfram and Hart had been leveled with an untold number of casualties.

Seams from alternate hell dimensions and at least one smaller version of the Hellmouth had opened, releasing tens of hundreds of monsters on the streets. Angel and Spike were missing. The Circle of the Black Thorn, a demonic version of the Mafia, had been decimated.

It was a bloodbath.

Then, a day later, all supernatural activity stopped. It was as if both sides of the war had declared a truce. To lick their wounds, regroup, who knew what. Giles switched to his online travel account and made arrangements for his flight, then slowly reached out and powered down the computer.

This was worse than he’d feared.

Later that evening, as he packed a carry-on bag, he looked up to see Buffy standing in the doorway. Her eyes were shadowed, her arms crossed defensively across her torso.

“What happened?” she asked. She was too used to loss. He wished he could spare her from this.

“Wesley has been killed,” he answered her gently. She winced. “To the best of my knowledge, Angel and Spike are still…” Not alive, exactly. He finally settled on “around.”

She looked slightly relieved, but the shadows were still there. “Want some company?”

“No,” he shook his head. “There’s nothing you can do, at this point.” He straightened from locking his case and stared at her. “If I promise to call you if I need you, will you promise not to follow me ‘just in case’?”

She grinned, a flash of teeth gone too quickly, then shook her head, blonde hair swinging wildly. “You better call me. Even if you don’t need me.”

He smiled in return, more relieved than he cared to admit. “As soon as I know anything more, I’ll pass it along.”

She nodded, then stepped forward and caught him in a brief, strong hug. He barely had time to pat her shoulder once before she let him go and stepped back.

“Watch yourself,” she punned, deadly serious delivery taking any humor from the phrase.

He nodded. She flashed another quick grin at him, then left as silently as she’d entered. He picked up his bag, dropped it by the front door, and settled down with a nice hot cup of tea to try to think. Then he picked up the phone. On the third ring, a husky voice answered.

“Hello?”

“Hello, Joe,” Giles greeted him wearily.

“Hey G,” Joe replied. “You sound like crap. You okay?”

“Yes,” Giles lied, and in the pool of silence that fell after the single curt syllable, he was relieved that Joe let it pass. “I’m sorry, I’ve some family business to take care of. I wanted to let you know I’ll be out of town for awhile.”

“That’s rough, man. I’ll miss ya at the jam session tomorrow. Anything I can do to help?”

Giles smiled slightly. Joe Dawson was a good man, and had become a good friend. One of the few Giles had let past his protective shell in the last several years. “Actually yes, that’s why I’m calling. I was wondering, have you heard anything… unexpected, lately, coming out of Los Angeles?”

There was a silence on the other end for a long moment before Joe answered slowly, “LA? Yeah, some weird stuff’s been going down out there. A rise in hunting, more challenges than usual, and a couple Watchers have missed their call-ins. You going to be out there?”

“Yes, why?” The activity level sounded about right for another averted apocalypse.

“Well, I was thinkin’, maybe you could do me a favor? Just until I can get somebody out there to cover.”

“What is it?” Giles asked, curiosity piqued.

“There’s a new Immortal out there, just came into his own. He’s fresh meat, clueless and vulnerable to the hunters running around. The guy I’d usually get to watch him is stuck up in Bakersfield cleaning up a mess. If you’re gonna be in the area, maybe you could keep an eye out for the new kid.”

“Los Angeles is a big place,” Giles warned.

“Yeah, I know. But this new Immortal’s got ties to the local paranormal community. Used to be a lawyer, got a rep as quite a wizard. Name’s Lindsey McDonald.”

“The name’s familiar.” Giles vaguely remembered a lawyer who’d given Angel some grief; perhaps it was the same man. “If I see him I’ll keep an eye on him.”

”Thanks, G!” Joe sounded enthusiastic. “Even if you do find him, it shouldn’t be a long time to baby-sit. I’ll scare up a Watcher for him and have him hook up with you.”

“All right,” Giles reluctantly agreed. “I won’t promise anything, though.”

“No problem, man,” Joe assured him. “Listen, fly safe, and let me know if there’s anything I can do for you, okay?”

Giles’ smile widened fractionally. “I will. And thank you, Joe.”

He didn’t get much sleep that night. Particularly vivid nightmares ensured that.

The airplane was as cramped and uncomfortable as expected. Giles buried his nose in a book and ignored various attempts from the Indian family sitting on his left to engage him with their toddler and the elderly lady sitting on his right to flirt.

It was a very long flight. The situation did not improve upon his arrival.

Los Angeles was hotter than Sunnydale, with a gritty taste to the air Giles hadn’t missed at all. The city moved at a frenetic pace, utterly oblivious to the fact that it had recently faced yet another barely-averted Apocalypse. Much like Sunnydale, although on a much larger scale.

Sighing internally at the grim task ahead of him, Giles squared his jaw, settled his glasses firmly on his nose, and got about the dreadful business.

The hotel was offensively cheerful and completely bland. The traffic was ridiculous, the rude manner of the pedestrians was atrocious, and the relentlessly bright sunshine gave Giles the headache.

The drive to the interim quarters of Wolfram and Hart was the standard nightmare. Muttering under his breath about idiots and suicide wishes, certain the cabbie wouldn’t understand a word since it was all in English, Giles straightened his collar, ran a hand over his hair in a habitual nervous movement, and steeled himself to face his duty.

The paperwork took less time than he’d hoped; the firm was nothing if not well-organized. The mortuary was a short cab ride away, not nearly long enough.

As Giles looked down into Wesley’s unnaturally calm face, he couldn’t help but trace the lines and scars the young man had gained in the less than ten years Giles had known him. Too young to die the way he did; Giles could smell the dark magick on him. A wizard had killed him, and enjoyed doing it.

For a moment, sheer rage bubbled up, threatening to overwhelm him. This was the kind of terrible anger that when coupled with youthful folly had made him a slave to Eyghon. He was older now, but the black temper remained, and on the edges of his vision he saw twisted shadows creep forward.

This place was a mystical vortex, more subtle by far than the Hellmouth but no less evil. Giles reined in his rage by sheer force of will, and watched the shadows reluctantly fade.

There were temptations here. Traps, as well. He would have to be on his guard. Staring down once more into Wesley’s deceptively placid features, Giles gave serious consideration to calling for reinforcements. But his options were few.

He couldn’t call Buffy. She was exceptional with physical threats but tended to jump in ill-prepared for metaphysical ones. He would end up spending more time worrying about her than he’d need to simply watch out for himself.

Had Tara been alive she would have been a perfect ally, calm, centered, essentially good. Willow, since her rehabilitation and subsequent partnership with Kennedy, would be a good resource, especially considering the probable origination of the worst threats, but she was off making amends to people she felt she’d wronged in the past and working on her control issues. The last he’d heard, she was trekking along the banks of the Brahmaputra along the southern rim of the Plateau of Tibet. He would have liked to have been a fly on the wall when Oz met Kennedy. Nevertheless, Willow was effectively out of reach.

He would have to go it alone.

He would stay in Los Angeles, beyond the settlement of Wesley’s affairs, if for no other reason than to track down Angel. The way the balance of power was shifting around him made Giles uneasy. If Angel still lived, Giles wished to do all he could to ensure that Angelus didn’t make his return. If he did, Giles would have to stake him.

The thought didn’t bother him in the least.

Reaching down to rest his hand against Wesley’s hair, Giles said a silent goodbye and wished the man’s soul a peaceful rest. After the life he’d led, he deserved nothing less.

Two days later, on a bright Sunday morning, Giles scattered Wesley’s ashes off the end of a quiet pier twenty minutes’ drive from where the man died. He lowered his head, said a prayer for the dead, and turned away. It was time to get back to work.

After staggering from the apartment where he’d apparently died, been kissed by a dead man who wasn’t a vampire, and been reborn as an immortal who wasn’t working for Wolfram and Hart, Lindsey headed for the one place he thought he might find Angel.

He didn’t.  A huge pile of rubble covered blocks where the headquarters of his old law firm used to be.

Surrounding it was a battlefield.  It looked as if half the hell dimensions in existence had dumped the combined contents of their graveyards onto the streets and alleys surrounding the building.  He stared in some confusion at the mess, picking his way over piles of corpses, every demon imaginable and several he wouldn’t have imagined in his worst nightmares.

Angel was nowhere to be found.  Lindsey did, eventually, find what was left of Gunn.  The dead man had a feral grin on his face, fierce pleasure frozen in rictus, a dozen colors of blood covering him from bald head to the soles of his shoes.  His eyes were open; they were oddly peaceful in contrast to his expression.  Lindsey knelt beside him and, when he found the eyelids wouldn’t close, took off his jacket to drape it over Gunn’s face.

“He fought like hell,” a voice came from behind Lindsey.

Lindsey was on his feet with a stake in his hand before he knew he’d moved, much less where the stake came from.  Spike backed away, both hands up, eyes wide.

“Slow down, there, cowpoke,” Spike drawled in a poor imitation of John Wayne.  It sounded ridiculous in his mongrel English accent.  “Don’t go killing the messenger, mate.  Speaking of which, did you know you’re glowing?”

Lindsey looked down at the symbols painted across his skin, visible through his shirt, and sighed.  “Damnit.”  He might be invisible to the Senior Partners, but he was shining like a neon sign and there were still a lot of demons around, if the battle was still on.  He glared at Spike.  “Is the fighting still going on?” he asked bluntly.

“Hope not,” Spike answered readily.  “Not exactly up for much, now, am I?”

Confused again, Lindsey upped the glare a bit and waited for an explanation.  Spike shrugged, crinkled his face… and didn’t vamp out.

“Oh.”  Lindsey tossed the stake back onto the body he’d pulled it from.  “Shansued, huh?” Boy, was Angel going to be pissed.

Spike gave him an insufferably pleased look, which turned to panic an instant later at something he saw over Lindsey’s shoulder.

“Incoming!” Spike yelled, and ducked.

Lindsey pivoted, turned, and thrust up with one fist, catching the Jwagmir demon in the belly with the full force of his punch.  Given that Jwagmiri carried the seat of their central nervous system in their bellies, this had the fortunate side-effect of sending the demon into a seizure.  Lindsey shook off the pain in his knuckles and looked down at the quivering body.  Ignoring the four paws tipped in razor-sharp claws, he waited for his chance then stomped the Jwagmir hard, feeling flesh give all the way to the spine.  With a single short gurgle it expired.

He sighed again and walked over to wipe his boot on the grass verge next to the curb.  As he passed Spike, he gave the exceptionally pale ex-vampire an assessing glance.

It wasn’t just his natural washed-out look.  Spike was terrified.  His eyes were wider than usual and he looked twitchier than Lindsey had ever seen him.  It wasn’t a good look for Spike.

“How you holding up?” Lindsey tossed over his shoulder.

The dam burst.  Spike, it seemed, had turned human near the beginning of the battle.  Since then, he’d been hunted, bitten, lost several fights, not healed at all, felt sick to his stomach, actually had to pee (which he hadn’t had to do in decades) at the most inconvenient times, he was starving to death, he was completely exhausted, and in general found this whole ‘human again’ deal much more up Angel’s alley than his own, because really “I liked being the Big Bad, really, I did, and bloody hell if I want to go back to being the wee Willie I was!  Besides, it’s not like I have any chance with Buffy, after all, and she’s the only reason I wanted the sodding soul to begin with…”

When he finally broke for breath he was shaking with what looked like anger, disgust and frustration.  Lindsey raised an eyebrow and didn’t bother smothering his grin.  “Then why don’t you find a nice vamp and show her your neck?”

Spike looked at him like he’d lost his mind, then reconsidered.  Lindsey grinned again as thoughts chased across Spike’s face.  Eventually Spike gave a grin of his own, turning and running off without another word.  As he rounded the corner Lindsey thought he heard Spike sing out, “Harmony, sweet, here I come!” but he couldn’t be sure.

Lindsey shook his head and resumed his hunt for Angel.  The air was cooling rapidly, as cool as it ever got in LA at least, and he decided it was time to take a break, make his way to the apartment he used to share with Eve and hope she hadn’t moved since he’d been in Wolfram and Hart’s hell dimension holding cell, take a shower, find some clothes, grab a bite to eat… THEN hunt down Angel and kill him.  Absently, he wondered how, or if, Eve had made it through the destruction of the firm.

He didn’t wonder for long.  Once he made it home, he spoke a quiet incantation that took down the wards and unlocked the door, keyed in the security code, and stepped into dusty, abandoned silence.  He knew, then, that she wouldn’t be coming home.

It was too bad; she’d been a decent woman, for a drone created by ultimate evil to serve their ends, and she’d loved him, even if he hadn’t loved her.  He shook off the melancholy that settled around him and headed off to the shower.

Eve had been a tool, as Lindsey had been a tool to Darla, as Angel was to the Powers that Be, as everyone was to someone, in Lindsey’s world.  Unfortunately for Eve, there wasn’t room for more than one obsession in Lindsey’s life, and that was Angel.  It had been for years.

Washing soap suds away, he absently traced a rune with his fingertips and admitted, if only to himself, that for that obsession, at least, there was no end in sight.

Fighting instead of thinking worked well for Angel.  As the last of the demons, hell hounds and dragonets fell, he looked around for more.  It was eerily silent after the chaos of battle.  All he could hear was a single heart beat.  He looked around.

Well, shit.

It was coming from Spike.  Spike, standing in the center of a ring of corpses, blood splattered all over him, mace in one hand, broken sword in the other, face in an utterly human snarl, with no fangs in sight.  Spike, who’d gotten the reward Angel had fought so long to attain.

Figured.

With a silent snarl of his own, Angel turned and strode off.  Someplace else.  Where there was no Spike.

No anybody else, either.

It gradually dawned on Angel that his plan had worked all too well.  The scary fiery rips in the sky had mended, leaving behind the gray on black of clouds against the night time he was used to seeing.  The moon was mostly hidden, leaving only a weak light to see by, plenty for his vampire-enhanced vision.

Damn it.

He was supposed to be the one who got the prize.  He was the freaking Hero, after all.  In the end he’d gotten every other person, every ally, human and non-human, around him, killed.  Except Spike, of course, and normally he’d say Spike didn’t count, except, of course, this time he not only counted, he won the whole goddamned jackpot.

Fred had been dead for awhile, and the bitch goddess who’d taken her place hadn’t ever really been part of Angel’s extended, now dead, adopted family.  The thought shook him.

Dead.

Yeah, he’d considered it, before he even told them what his crazy plan way, but he’d thought it was worth it.

Of course, he also thought he’d be dead, too.

Or human. At least.

Still, dead.  And he was, still dead, that was.

He grumbled under his breath and kept walking.

Gunn was dead; Angel had seen something disembowel him.  Another hero, one Angel mourned, as he mourned Cordelia, as he mourned Doyle.  All dead.  Wesley, Illyria said he was dead, too.  That was a damned shame.  Wes had turned out to be their strength, even when they thought he was screwing with them, and Angel thought he should feel guiltier about what went down.  But then he’d think about Connor, and everything his son had gone through, and what little guilt he had went away again.  Still, losing Wes like that, it was a shame.

At least Connor was alive.  Well.  Still wanted to know him.  Miracles did happen.  Once in awhile.

He wondered how Lorne had done.  He knew he’d probably never see Lorne again, certainly not if Lorne saw him first, and that was another shame.  It probably hadn’t been very nice to have Lorne kill the pesky little shit… okay, it was not nice at all… but somebody’d had to do it, and Lindsey at least trusted Lorne so would let him see his back.  Since Lindsey’d come back from Tibet he was a nasty little bugger to try and surprise.

Since he’d come back from the hell holding cell he was an even tougher bastard than he had been.  Something about getting your heart ripped out only to wake up and have to go through it again every day … well, Angel supposed that’d make anybody distrustful, and Lindsey hadn’t been the trusting type to begin with, and why was he still thinking about Lindsey?

Angel was beginning to think he might have a bit of an obsession with Lindsey.

A gang of enforcers, a motley mix of Urshluk, Groleks, and Pelter demons, boiled out of an alley and surrounded him.  Angel gave up his brooding with relief and went back to fighting.  Muscle memory and sheer bloody enjoyment carried him through.

This was the closest his own demon ever came to being free, wallowing in the unthinking fun of slaughter.  True, none of the slaughtered were edible, and that was a drawback, but after the last one fell, Angel wandered through the darkened streets until he found one of his favorite suppliers, and bought a couple pints of pig blood.  Wandering back into the night, he poked the top of the bag with a fang and took a gulp.  It tasted stale and a little thick, but he didn’t bother trying to find a microwave.

Since he didn’t have an apartment any more.

So, no microwave.

He finished the last of the blood, tossed the container in a dumpster, and kept wandering.  That set the pattern for the rest of the night.  Wander, brood, fight as needed, wander some more, brood some more. Honestly, it was a little boring, but he didn’t know what else to do.

Sunrise found him in the sewers, staring out at the world, wondering what was left, since everyone he cared about was dead.

Again.

“Ready to die, you son of a bitch?”

Good thing he was capable of simultaneously brooding, reacting to block a threat, and wondering if he’d lost his mind.  Otherwise Lindsey’s stake would have caught him right through his unbeating heart.

Oh, he was gonna enjoy this.

Lindsey swung the stake with deadly accuracy, but Angel managed to twist out of the way. The wood tore through Angel’s biceps, black cloth and white skin giving way to a line of blood.

Strike one.

The next blow landed exactly where Lindsey aimed it, catching Angel in the kidneys and sending him to his knees. He was up unbelievably fast, but Lindsey reacted just as quickly, feeling something more pulse through him than the usual adrenaline and underlying magic he’d mastered in his time away from LA. The magic sang deep inside him, in his bones, in his blood, and he moved with it, flowing around Angel in a dance that could only end in death.

Permanent death, if Lindsey had his way.

Angel flipped backward to avoid a kick heading for his throat, and taunted, “Hey, glow-boy. Looking kind of painted up there. I thought the Senior Partners took all your pretty body art away from you when they sucked you into hell?”

He swung at Lindsey and Lindsey grabbed hold of his wrist, using Angel’s arm as a lever to slam Angel into the ground. Angel bounced back up, vamping out as he came.