Chapter 2

The meeting was boring. They were always boring. Looking over at Angel, he could see that the president of Wolfram and Hart was raptly paying attention. Of course, it helped that Angel had been hitting the bottle for a few hours. Angel could sit through the most boring meetings as long as he was drunk. Finally, Will noticed movement. They were looking at him. He managed an intelligent answer that made everyone in the room nod in agreement, and quickly called an end to the fiasco of a budget meeting.

Will watched the financial advisors leave, and then focused his full attention on Angel. They both had papers, birth certificates, social security cards, passports and other various paper work that stated their legal names and birth dates and all the other information that seemed to be so important for society. Spike's legal name was now William Benson. Will, for short. Being a human, or close enough, anyway, he couldn't go around with the name Spike on a drivers license. Angel's paperwork all stated that he was Liam O'Connor. Another way to torture himself, Will thought. A reminder of the life he lived hundreds of years ago, a life that had been brutally devastated.

"Angel…do you think it's the best idea to come to these things totally in the bag?"

He sighed and stared at the man who very few people would have mistaken for the dead vampire Spike. "Will, shut up. No one noticed." He rose and walked over to the well concealed bar at the far side of the conference room.

Things had changed in the past few years. Ever since Angel had come back from whatever hell he had been in, and found Wesley, Gunn, Fred and Spike, none of whom remembered anything of the six months previous, the world around them had changed. Angel had tried to explain, but he couldn't really convey what he had done. Will got the gist of it though. Angel had jumped through a portal into hell during the big battle in the alley. Portals were starting to open all over LA by that time. After getting into hell, Angel hadn't wasted much time; he went straight to the source. Apparently, the biggest reason that the Wolf, Ram and Hart had never been killed was because no one had ever tried before. Angel changed that.

Angel had said that it hadn't taken that long to kill them. They were well guarded, strong, but he was insatiable. He wouldn't stop. After that deed was done, he had gone into an intra-dimensional dimension. Something like a space in between two walls. He had described it like a maze, an ever changing maze that wound around itself continuously, with doors everywhere, and shimmering puddles that showed moments in time. He got lost a lot, until he started to figure out a pattern and how to beat it. It had taken him years, but he pushed the walls a little bit here and there, had gone through the right doors and changed things fractionally where he thought necessary. The end result was that Gunn hadn't died, only been in the ICU for months. Wesley had a fate close to Gunn's. Illyria was pulled from Fred, leaving a changed Fred, but Fred none the less. And he and Spike were human. Or close to it. The only door he could never open, the fate he could never change, was Cordy's. He had never been able to find her.

When angel returned from his space-between trip, six months had passed in reality, and Wesley, Gunn, Fred, and Spike were simply standing before him, with no memory other than what they had believed to be their deaths. Fred had said it best: "I died, and it lasted as long as a blink, and then I was right here."

Fred was the most changed. Part of her remembered being Illyria. Her mind remembered flashes; her body remembered a power she no longer possessed. Fred was harder, more cunning now. She had a sureness, a confidence she had never had before, but with it came a subtle ruthlessness, a quiet sharpened edge that few people could really understand. Will wasn't sure if Fred had softened Illyria, or if Illyria had hardened Fred.

Two years ago, Fred's parents had died in a car accident. They had been hit by a drunk driver; he hadn't survived either. Fred had changed a lot during those times. Se had become a little more withdrawn for a time, but she also had become a little less shrewd, a little less ruthless. The accident had the exact opposite of what Will had thought it would do. Fred actually became more like Fred.

He was sure that had it not been for Wesley, things would have turned out differently. They were married not long after 'the blank period,' their name for the six months when they were, but weren't, in existence.

Things had actually gone very well immediately following the blank period. The work was hard, taking over Wolfram and Hart again and weeding out the evil demons and employees had not been easy. They had killed a lot of people and creatures during that time. They had rebuilt the business into something respectable, and the branches in Europe followed suit. Especially after Angel and Gunn had traveled to every branch and decapitated the presidents.

Angel was President of Wolfram and Hart, that meant every branch answered to him. There were multiple vice presidents, one at every branch that answered not only directly to Angel, but to a board of directors. Every branch had a board of directors, and they answered to the Executive board. The hierarchy worked well. Something needed to be done, it went to the Board, then to the Vice President, then to the Executive Board, and finally to Angel. Of course, not every decision or action was made by the President; Angel really didn't care about most of what happened 'in house,' that is in every particular branch. He only cared about things that would put the world in jeopardy, or cause loss of life. Most of time, he was sent a detailed report, along with a copy of the minutes, from every board meeting of every branch. There were committees within each branch, so that the boards never had to micro manage.

Wesley, Fred and Gunn made up the executive board of the LA branch. Will was vice president. Wesley, Fred and Gunn were also chairpersons. It was a good system, and the checks within the system generally meant that corruption was ferreted out quickly. It was difficult to hide projects within committees from the other chairpersons, and that meant it was hard to hide from the board, which was comprised of all the chairpersons and a few other people.

The LA branch was designed a little differently. Angel wanted his people at the helm, but he also wanted them to do things they enjoyed. Sadly, even after finding Lorne, he refused to come back. Angel had made sure that he wanted for nothing, and sometimes made anonymous donations, though Lorne didn't need it, to the club in Miami the demon had opened. The club, and the area it was situated in, suited the Demon more than his life in LA ever had. Angel told himself he was happy Lorne was happy.

Angel of course kept tabs on Connor as well. The young man was almost finished with his degree in Art History at UCLA. Angel had, without Connor's knowledge, helped him secure an internship with the Las Angeles Museum of Art.

Other than Wolfram and Hart, Angel had continued his investments, and developed a few side businesses; most were concerned with shipping and trucking. The history that Angel had created for himself, to explain the stocks in his possession since the 1930s, was that his grandfather had purchased the stocks after the stock market crash and had passed them down to his father, who in turn invested in IBM and Microsoft. Angel had always had these stocks; he remembered when Cordy had found out about them. She had thrown a fit over the fact that he wouldn't use the holdings to pay the bills.

Angel had liquidated some of his stock holdings, but most of it had gone into new investments and businesses. And his house in the hills. The others had apartments in the city, but Angel had opted for a large house in Beverly Hills. He had found a house that was situated on almost an acre, and was completely hidden from view. It was gated in, and came complete with two guest houses, a spa and a pool. The four bedroom main house was largely left unoccupied most of the time.

Will, Wes, Gunn and Angel had formed a tight bond throughout the years; they were closer now than they had been when they first started working together. In the beginning, at Wolfram and Hart, everyone had been more focused on the job, on the novelty of being where they were, and less on the friendships they had built over the years. It was different now that the company wasn't evil, or working for evil. Their jobs weren't as polarizing as they once had been.

Will looked up at Angel, who was about half way through a four finger glass of single malt scotch. Every day since after Angel had sent that first letter, he died a little. Will watched Angel for the last three or so years shrink into himself a little more every day. Everything Angel had done, he had done for her. The prophecy had been fulfilled and Angel had made serious headway in the demon community, shrinking it little by little and forcing demons into communities or families that would live peaceably or be held responsible. None of it had brought her back to him. Will knew that Angel still sent letters to her every few months, but he never received a reply. Will still couldn't understand that.

Angel had always had a bit of an addictive personality. A few hundred years ago, he and Angel had gotten drunk together nearly every night. They drank enough whiskey to kill half the human beings of the world population at that time. Will knew that Angel had started to smoke again, and he was drinking more than what was healthy. The drinking had been escalating steadily.

"What are you doing tonight?"

Angel looked at him and downed the rest of his glass. "What I do every night. I'm taking some files home, signing my name to what Wesley and Gunn and Fred tell me to sign and then I am going to get thoroughly in the bag. Why?"

"Well…I thought we could go out."

"Is this a date?"

Will smiled; at least Angel still had a sense of humor. He wasn't totally dead inside. "Yeah, I'll buy you flowers and everything. Come on, let's go to dinner. We'll get good food, we can go to the cemetery, kill something, and go back to your place. There's a game on tonight."

Angel looked out the full wall of windows over the city he had adopted as his own. He loved this city. He loved the people in it. The one person he really wanted in his city, though, wouldn't come. He had asked her to. He had begged her to give him another chance, to just meet with him, hear what he had to say. She had never even responded. He almost found a place inside of him to hate her. Almost. Mostly, he hated himself, for screwing up so badly and in so many ways.

Will's tapping his foot woke angel from his reverie. "Yeah, that sounds good actually. I could handle getting out for a while."

Will hoped the night wouldn't turn into another let's-whip-Angel marathon. He could only handle so much self-hatred from the man.