Disclaimer: I do not own Barry Manilow's "Can't smile without you", nor do I own Lloyd Cole's "If I were a Song."

Clark hears a distant peal of thunder from the dark clouds above. It looks like rain. There's a strong wind blowing across the farm, and Clark can see the corn stalks bending in the drag of the gale.

There is a sound, someone's laughter, coming from the barn. Clark slowly makes his way there.

"Mom? Dad?" No one answers his calls. He gets closer to the barn and hears something.

"Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!"

Clark steps into the barn to see a little boy zigzagging left and right, an action figure held high above his head.

"Hey, Clark," he says. Younger Clark stops running and turns, grinning at his older self.

"Hey, Clark," he greets back.

"Where's mom and dad?" Clark asks. Younger Clark only shrugs.

"Wanna play with me?" He asks Clark.

"What are you playing?"

Younger Clark holds up an old action figure of a handsome man in a red, blue, and yellow uniform.

"I'm playing 'Captain Action, Hero of Justice'!"

Clark smiled, he remembered that toy well. He had begged his dad for weeks to get it, and he had played with it endlessly.

Conner knocked on the heavy wooden door to Cordelia's room before opening it to find her sitting on the bed, staring intently into space. He had once walked in without knocking and she had freaked out on him.

"Hey," he began; unfolding the blanket he had pulled from one of the hundred hotel closets. "I brought you a blanket."

He sat down on the bed next to her and threw the blanket over her legs, pulling it up to cover the growing mound of her belly. Some deep part of him that he would never show or admit to found it unsettling. He didn't know as much about humans as many, but he knew their child should not be growing so fast.

"How are you feeling?" He asked.

Her breath was shallow and labored, almost a pant.

"A little woozy. Could be the whole 'Angelus nailing me with a crossbow thing'..." Connor found another pillow and placed it behind her head. She leaned back into it with a grateful sigh.

"Or it could be the baby," she continued, "his way of saying 'hello'".

She turned away from him onto her side and Conner laid himself out on the bed, propping his head up in his hand and gently running his fingers through her hair.

"You're sure Faith's all right?" She asked.

"Yeah," he confirmed. "When Wesley called, he said she was hurt pretty bad, but she's a slayer. They're really strong, right?"

"For a human," Cordelia agreed. "I just can't believe this 'Red Death' thing is real."

"I'd hear about him from demons sometimes, but the stories were so wild and different I thought they must be made up. Guess we're about to find out."

Cordelia turned back over to look at him.

"What do you mean?" She demanded.

"They're bringing him here; I know I told you that." Connor's face twisted in confusion.

"You told me it and the Beast killed each other, why would they be bringing a dead body here?"

"Oh...whoops."

"Whoops? Whoops what, Connor?"

"Sorry, I could have sworn I told you. The Red Death survived its fight with the Beast, they're bringing him here."

"What?" Cordelia shrieked, grabbing Connor by the arm in a painful grip.

How can she be that strong? Connor wondered.

"Have they all gone insane?"

"This thing killed the Beast, didn't it? I guess they figured it was on our side?"

"Survived! It killed the Beast and survived, Connor. That means that whatever this thing is, it's stronger than the Beast. What if they're wrong? This thing could kill us all!"

"We have the sanctuary spell..." Conner mumbled. He hated when she got mad at him, it made him feel wretched and worthless.

"Because magic has worked so well until now?" She spat, turning away from him again.

Hopeless anger gripped Connor's gut and twisted.

What does she want from me? What can I do to make her happy again?

He didn't know, he never seemed to know. He cursed that Holt had never found time between tracking seminars and decapitation lessons to teach him about women.

"It seems to be sleeping. It was hurt real bad and Wesley says it's probably in some kind of healing coma."

He adopted Cordelia's term of it to try and please her.

"Really?" Cordelia turned back to him, her voice curious. Connor felt a stab of hope.

"Yeah, they're gonna put him in the cage we built for Angelus."

"If he killed the beast, it probably won't hold him."

"It might not, but they figure it's better than nothing."

She was silent for an agonizingly long time before she said "I want you to keep an eye on things downstairs, Connor. We've all been making some pretty bad judgment calls since this thing started, and I'd hate for this to be the one that gets us all killed."

Connor nodded, trying to think of something impressive to say.

"I won't let him hurt you, either of you. The Red Death or Angelus, it doesn't matter, I'll keep you safe."

"I know," She sauntered over to him and caressed his cheek with her hand. Connor leaned into the soft warmth of her palm. "Just remember, no one can know about us."

Connor pulled back as if the caressing hand had slapped him.

"Are you ashamed of me?" He whispered.

"Of course not!" She scolded.

"Then why don't you tell them?" Connor demanded, hurt on his face.

Cordelia spoke slowly and evenly.

Like I'm some stupid kid Connor thought.

"Because they wouldn't understand. Our baby is growing so fast, it would scare them. And that fear might make them want to kill it, like they wanted to kill you. But trust me, Connor. It won't be too long. They're all gonna know what's growing inside of me."

Connor reached out with excruciating tenderness and placed a hand on her stomach, afraid that he might hurt the child. He swore he could feel it move, his child.

I swear things will be different for you. I'm going to do all the things Angel never could. I'm going to protect you, and Cordelia, and we'll all be happy together, my family.

Down in the Hyperion's lobby, Charles Gunn was busy arming the troops.

"Meet your new best friend," He said as he handed out two loaded tranquilizer guns to Lorne and Fred. "If super-bad shows up, the sanctuary spell should keep us safe, but-"

Fred groaned and Charles gave her a curious look.

"'But'," she exclaimed. "There's always a 'but', when this is all over, can we have a big 'but' moratorium?"

Something in Gunn twisted as he watched the adorable way her face screwed up in annoyance.

Bad time to go there.

He forced himself to pull his attention off her and onto Lorne's green-skinned visage.

Much better, or worse...whatever.

"Did I mention the only shots I'm good at involve tequila?" Lorne asked as he frowned at the tranquilizer gun, holding it upside down in a grip that was just as likely to result in him shooting his own foot as anyone else.

Well, this should be just awesome Gunn thought to himself.

"You don't think Angelus is planning a repeat performance, do you?" Fred asked, trying to hide her nerves the only way she knew how, questing about for information. "I—I mean, he's gotta know we'd be prepared."

It was mainly rhetorical, but Gunn answered anyway.

"Doesn't mean we drop our guard. If he pops a fang in here, thwack him where it hurts."

"Yeah, good night not-so-sweet prince." Lorne agreed, adjusting his grip on the tranquilizer gun cautiously.

"I'm gonna recheck downstairs, make sure he can't creep in through any of the sewer tunnels." Gunn decided.

"Yeah," Fred nodded her support with a gentle bob of her head "if Lilah managed to break and enter—" She spun suddenly, bringing the tranq gun whirling around and dropping into a firing stance that was much improved from when she and Gunn had first started working on it.

The target she had lined up on the stairs turned out to be Connor, and Fred nearly dropped the gun in pure mortification.

"Thought you were more of a Taser girl," Connor teased.

Fred began a stammering apology, and Gunn decided to spare her.

"How's Cordy?"

"You know. Tired, I guess." The way Connor's eyes shifted when he said it made Gunn suspicious, but whatever weirdness was going on between Connor and Cordelia was not something he wanted to dedicate any attention to at the moment.

Fred approached the stairs, saying "Maybe I should stop up and che—"

"No-" Connor suddenly interrupted her. "She doesn't want to see anyone yet. She just wanted some... soup. Really hot soup." He walked off, presumably in search of soup.

The three in the lobby share a look.

"Odd bird," Lorne spoke up, face twisting in confusion. "And getting birdier."

"You don't think he and Cordy are still…" Fred had a face of her own, less of confusion and more revulsion.

"Could be the love bug," Lorne speculated, not sounding convincing to anyone, even himself. "But I'm not picking up warm fuzzies. Whatever it is, I just can't get a good read on it."

Gunn just sighed."

Not much of the warm or the fuzzies going on these days. Why should they be any different?"

"He's probably just upset about Faith benching him." Fred theorized, "Anybody else think maybe that was a humongous mistake?" She looked around at the other two for support.

"Not unless we want to get Angel back in anything other than a dustpan." Lorne said.

Gunn nodded in agreement.

"Connor's better off playing nursemaid, or whatever he's doing with Cordy that I really don't want to know about."

"Yeah, but Wes said Faith kind of got demolished." Fred added. "She's supposed to be our best chance of getting Angel back, but what if she's not up to it?"

"We'll work something out," Gunn reassured her. Some part of him was angry at how powerless he was at that moment. He couldn't even assure the woman he loved that he would be able to protect her. He started to wonder if Fred wished Wesley were here instead of him before crushing the thought to bits mid-formation.

Nothing good down that road.

Fred was rubbing the back of her neck in a nervous gesture he knew well. Somewhere under that furrowed brow was a mind moving a mile a minute.

"What about this 'Red Death' guy that they're bringing back?" She asked.

"Ah, the Beast-slayer" Lorne began. "How's that for a big, fat question mark? He came out of a blue-er blue than even the Beast." Lorne leaned against the counter and propped his head up in his hands.

"But he's on our side right?" Fred asked, hopefully. "I mean, he killed the Beast and brought back the sun."

Gunn felt a wry smile tug his lips. Fred was thirty one different flavors of genius, but she could still be incredibly naive about some things. He found it terribly endearing.

"We can't be sure of that," He began without realizing that he had started pacing nervously. "For all we know, this guy is something worse than the Beast, and only took him out to get rid of the competition."

"Well then isn't bringing him here maybe not the best idea?" She asked.

"Well, you know what they say, Sunshine," Lorne interjected "enemies closer, and all that. Besides, now that we know the sanctuary spell is working, this is probably the best place to be. At least here, we know he can't cause any damage."

No, here we think he can't cause any damage. Gunn and his friends had gotten burned by Lorne's cure-all "Sanctuary Spell" too many times in the past for Gunn to put any real faith in it.

But then, if this thing did take down the Beast, it's entirely possible the rest of my arsenal will be just as useless. His face turned grim, and he decided to start that sweep of the lower floors before he thought himself into insanity.

Fred was apparently of a similar mind because she was on the move.

"I'm getting sick of sitting here waiting for something awful to happen, I'm going into research mode again. We've got bupkis on the Beast or the Beastmaster, but maybe I can pull something up on this 'Red Death' guy." She said as she made for the back office.

"Good idea" Lorne perked up. "I'll call up my contacts and see what I can find out, now that the blackout is done, maybe we can get out of this gossip blackout we've been stuck in for the past few weeks. Better than sitting here, going nuts at any rate."

With that, the three went off to work.

"Sure, I'll play with you," Clark tells Younger Clark. "What should I do?"

"You are going to be the Evil Doctor Mallus, and Captain Action. I will be trusty sidekick, Clark Kent!"

"Okay," Clark agreed. Younger Clark handed him Captain Action. The paints had long faded to pale ghosts of the once vibrant colors, some places the paint had chipped off altogether. This Captain Action could once have done up to twenty-four action poses, and had done all twenty four so often that all the joints had popped out at some point or another. He remembered how he used to cry every time a piece came off, how he would go running to find his mom or dad.

They would always find a way to fix it. At first, that had meant just popping the wayward limbs into place, but after a while more and more pieces had to be creatively glued on until the Champion of justice could only manage about four of the original twenty-four action poses. The poor man's body was scoured with knicks and scratches from his battles against Doctor Mallus and the forces of evil.

It didn't bother him any, though. Captain Action never gave up, and he never gave in. He would always fight to protect the innocent, defend the weak, and help the helpless. There was nothing that Captain Action couldn't do, no foe he couldn't defeat. That was because evil never prospers, and all you needed to do was be true.

Clark grabbed a bale of hay and scattered it in a circle on the barn floor. Then, he took a long spool of string, tied one end around Captain Action's leg, and the other on the guardrail of the upper loft, suspending the Captain above the pile of hay.

Little Clark came rushing in.

"Oh no, Captain Action," he cried out.

Clark gave his best madman cackle, lowering his voice to a sneer.

"You're too late, Clark Kent! I have captured Captain Action, and soon he shall meet his doom in the terrible lava pits of Doctor Malus! Ahahahahaha!"

Clark leaned over the pit of "lava" and grabbed onto the suspended Captain Action. Changing his voice to a gruffer, more confident timbre, he said:

"Clark, you must help me!"

"I'm coming, Captain Action!" Young Clark ran forward, but Clark had let go of Captain Action and stepped back as Doctor Mallus.

"Silly sidekick! How will you save your friend when you are trapped under the weight of my Gravity Wave Gun? Pew pew pew pew pew!

Clark held up his arms and aimed the imaginary weapon at the young hero.

Young Clark slowed as he was hit by wave after wave of Super-gravity until finally he couldn't take it anymore and he fell to the ground.

Clark laughed again.

"Now with both Captain Action and his trusty sidekick dealt with, there is no one to stop Doctor Mallus from taking over the world!"

Clark reached out and once again took hold of Captain Action.

"Clark! You need to get up, Clark! You have to fight!"

"I...can't!" Young Clark cried out from the floor as he struggled against Doctor Mallus' gravity waves. "I'm not strong enough!"

"Yes you are, Clark! I believe in you, you're a hero! Heroes never give up, Clark! Heroes never give in! Remember, all you need to do is be true!"

Young Clark groaned as he struggled to his knees.

"Impossible," Doctor Mallus gasped. "No one can resist the weight of my gravity waves!"

"Guess you forgot, Doctor Mallus, that when you have justice on your side, there's nothing that can stop you! All you need to do is stay true!" With a last cry, Young Clark got to his feet and ran, leaping over the dreaded lava pit, to snatch Captain Action from the air.

"Nooooooo!" Doctor Mallus cried out as the two heroes escaped his dastardly scheme. Young Clark and the now freed Captain Action came at him in a charging tackle that stopped just short of actually hitting him.

Clark knew his cue and flung himself back onto another bale of hay, defeated.

"Well done, Clark," he said in his Captain Action voice. "Because of you, we've saved the day. You are a good hero, and an even better friend."

Young Clark nodded.

"It's just like you said, Captain, all you need to do is be true."

Young Clark stuck his hands out to his sides and made engine noises as he "flew" out of the barn, Captain Action in hand.

Clark just lay back in the hay. It was incredibly soft, so soft he didn't want to move. He just wanted to stay there and sleep for a very, very long time.

Faith toweled herself off and quickly put her sweat-and-blood stained clothes back on.

Lovely.

She stepped out of the bathroom and quickly made for the bedroom, throwing the door open and announcing,

"Squeaky clean, let's blow."

Wesley's head shot up at her entrance, his hands still exploring the naked torso of the Red Death's sleeping form.

"..." there was nothing he could say, so he resigned himself to the inevitable.

Faith seemed just as stunned as he for a moment before a wicked grin split her face.

"Now's really not the time, Wes, though for the record, I'm into it."

Wesley got up and gave a long suffering sigh.

"I was just examining him."

"Like what you see?"

I certainly do, this boy is cut! She thought, just wishing someone would get all the dried blood off that taught, bronze torso. God, I've been in prison way too long.

Wesley simply shot her a glare and realized he would never be able to win, so he settled for redressing the Red Death and stepping out into the living room.

Faith got the sense that he wanted to talk to her about something and followed him out. The look he shot her made her shift her eyes in embarrassment.

"Right, sorry about the shower." She apologized, another thing she was rusty at.

My last apology was something like "I'm sorry officer; I've been a bad, bad girl." She hadn't been very sincere, though she had been very enthusiastic.

"I'm not worried about the bathroom, Faith...though I'm pretty sure my security deposit's a complete loss. I need to know you're in the game, Faith. All the way."

Faith felt her rebellious streak flare up and she tried to keep her face neutral.

"Five by five, boss."

Wesley gave her a long, hard appraisal before turning away.

"Good, now let's collect our 'sleeping beauty' back there and get back to the hotel."

"Yeah, what's the deal with that anyway?" Faith asked, the previous tension gone out of her.

Scholar Wes came back as he said "Well, as far as I can tell, his body has gone into some kind of healing coma. All the surface wounds have closed, so I can only assume he's taken more internal damage that we can't see, though without knowing what species of demon he is I can't know for sure."

Faith's mouth tugged down in distaste as she remembered one of her own more unpleasant experiences.

"Coma, huh?" She said, "Those are always fun."

"Yes, but I doubt he'll be in his as long as you were in yours."

They collected their gear and went about the process of trying to disguise the Red Death once again.

"Yeah, hate to break it to ya, Wes, but you're definitely gonna have to leave this apartment because there's no way one of your neighbors doesn't tell the cops we were carting a dead body around."

Wesley just sighed.

Clark heard another peal of thunder in the distance and frowned.

"Storm's coming," he said with a sigh. There would be lots to do. He forced himself up and wandered out of the barn. He was halfway to the house when he saw something further up the road. He walked over and saw it was Captain Action, lying face down in the dirt.

Clark picked him up and looked around. He saw no one.

"Clark?" He called out. No answer.

"He must be further on up the road."

Clark dusted Captain Action off and looked up at the thick storm clouds.

"Wouldn't do for you to get drenched on top of everything else, Captain."

Clark opened up his jacket and put Captain Action in an internal chest pocket close to his heart and started walking.

He wasn't sure how long he'd been walking, it couldn't have been very long, yet for some reason he was already near the forest.

"Clark?" he called out again for the umpteenth time. Still no answer.

"Boy do I hope you weren't silly enough to go in there."

Seeing no other option, he started into the forest, following the path. It was uneventful at first, lots of shade and trees but little else. Before long he came upon a figure lying face down by the roadside.

"Hey," Clark ran over to the fallen man. "Are you okay, sir?" he rolled the man over and found that the man's face was strangely tight and bumpy.

Some off-task part of his brain told him it was a vampire. No matter what he did, the vampire didn't respond, so Clark continued along, Captain Action thumping on his chest.

As he went, he found more and more vampires and even demons lying on the roadside. Further along still he found even human bodies appearing in the mix. He felt like he recognized them too.

He definitely did, most of them were in the public eye in some way or another. Radical politicians, celebrities, and religious leaders Clark had often seen on the news.

They were always organizing in places and holding ups signs like

"Faggots burn in hell," or "Spics go back to Mexico."

Clark was pretty sure he had also seen some Klan members in the piles too.

"Who is doing this?" Clark wondered. He knew he had to find them soon and stop them before they killed anyone else, so he started to run.

I can make it. All I need to do is be true, he thought.

He ran faster and faster past greater and great piles of bodies, demon and human alike. Soon Clark saw him, a tall man with dark hair and a bright red leather jacket and equally bright red leather pants.

"It's him! It's the Red Death!" Clark ran until he was right behind the Red Death.

Together, Faith and Wesley managed to pile everything back into the car and make their way back to the Hyperion just after nightfall. Wesley performed a miracle of parallel parking and they took a hold of the Red Death, Faith by the feet, and Wesley by the armpits, and started to carry him inside.

"Alright, once we drop this guy off with the others, we go after Angelus. We track him, we find him, we-"

"Get your asses kicked? I don't know, wild guess."

Faith dropped the feet she had been holding and spun to see Angelus striding out the front door of the Hyperion towards them.

Crap! She thought, hearing a thud behind her as Wesley also dropped the Red Death to the ground.

Faith and Angelus lunged forward as one, Faith trying to seize the offensive with a series of rapid jabs, but she was surprised and off balance, Angelus easily blocked her strikes and retaliated with a sweeping kick.

The Red Death's body was right behind her, so Faith had no choice but to take the full force of the blow with a left-sided block. Pain shot through her arm and side, but she ignored it and quickly wrapped her arm around Angelus' kicking leg, but Angelus was just as fast. He leveraged his own trapped leg to lift himself into the air and lash another kick at Faith's face. She couldn't get her guard up in time and had to roll with the strike.

She stumbled back and tripped over the Red Death's long legs, falling back into Wesley who was still scrambling to readjust his grip on the rifle he had strapped to his back. The gun flew wide into the bushes as they fell into a tangle of limbs.

Faith was pretty sure she kicked Wesley in their struggle to regain their feet. She spun, searching for Angelus, finding him behind her with his hands on Wesley's throat while Wesley struggled in vain to escape the Vampire's grip.

"Sucky spell, huh?" Angelus mocked, "You think it'd at least go to the sidewalk."

Faith kept herself tense, ready for any sudden movements.
"Let him go. This is between you and me."

Angelus just laughed.
"It's never just between you and me, Faith. Wes'll always be in the middle. Wes and a dead body, apparently."

Angelus looked at the prone form of the Red Death, still covered in his rather useless tablecloth disguise.

Wesley stopped struggling long enough to kick the cloth off the Red Death's face, and Angelus blinked.

"Why are you guys carrying that around? Are you gonna give him a hero's burial to thank him for sacrificing himself doing your job for you?" Angelus hissed.

The Red Death drew one long breath and Angelus stumbled back, dragging Wesley along.

Faith felt a smirk.

"That's right, Psycho. The Beast-slayer lives. He's, uh...napping off the big fight but pretty soon he'll be ready for round two. How do you like your chances then?"

Faith had slowly started to circle around, trying to take advantage of Angelus' split attention to cut off his escape.

"Best turn yourself in right now so we can bring Angel back. No telling what our boy here might do to you. You hide back behind Angel, and you survive."

"Nah," Angelus denied "you don't know this thing, you won't risk that it kills me."

"You willing to bet a fiery death on that?"

Faith heard footsteps behind her.

"Faith!" Gunn called out.

She risked a half turn and saw a rifle sailing through the air. She caught it and spun quickly to train it on Angelus, who was already fleeing. She got off one shot, two, then Angelus has already vaulted over the outer wall.

She cursed herself and ran to Wesley, tossed onto the ground when Angelus first fled. Gunn ran past her.

Faith doesn't even get to start checking Wesley before he yells at her.

"Go!"

No time to hesitate, Faith brings the rifle back up to a ready position and runs out onto the street, senses stretched to their limit. She finds Gunn, turning slowly, a grimace set deep in his face.

"He's gone."

God dammit!

She bites down on the urge to sigh and marches back toward the hotel.

"Anyone hurt?" She asks.

"No," Gunn shakes his head out of the corner of her eye. "The demon DMZ we put up did its job."

Wesley was already back up, and he fell into step with the two of them as they walked by.

"Angelus was carrying something, looked like a book, what was it?" He asked.

"Not sure," Gunn said as they stopped in front of the door. "I was sealing off the sewer entrance when it happened, by the time Fred called me he was gone and I thought 'chase first, questions later'."

Wesley nodded his ascent and then realized it was odd they had all suddenly stopped. He looked to Faith, who had stopped in front of the door and was simply looking at the two of them, expectantly.

"Faith?" Wesley began.

"Wes." She countered.

The three of them continued to stand there, staring at each other until Faith decided to cut them a break.

"Aren't you boys forgetting something?" She tilted her head ever so slightly. Gunn and Wesley followed her nod down the steps and out over the walkway to where the sleeping form of the Red Death still lay.

"Oh..."

The two men hurriedly collected him off the ground and Faith led them all inside.

Fred brought her tranq gun up in a shaky grip as soon as the door opened. Faith tossed her hands up to reassure her.

"Whoa, easy there, Mcgraw."

Fred lowered her gun and sighed in relief as Gunn and Wesley followed Faith in. They struggled to carry what seemed to be a body wrapped in a table cloth between them.

"Is that-"

"The Red Death." Faith confirmed.

Wesley and Gunn finally deposited their cargo and straightened themselves.

"This guy is...not light." Gunn huffed.

Wesley turned and saw Lorne snoring silently on another couch. He lifted a curious eyebrow at Gunn, who simply waved him off.

"Stray tranq." He said.

Fred began a thorough examination of the floor tiles.

"What happened?" Wesley asked.

Fred spoke up quickly; cutting off Gunn who she had known would try and spare her embarrassment. She felt she'd been enough of a coward already, so she should at least take responsibility.

"I was in the back doing research when Angelus popped in waving this thing." She pulled the fake charm from her back pocket.

"Turns out a slightly mystic-y looking dollar store charm is enough to turn me into a quivering pile of goo. He took the Wolfram and Hart papers, looking for stuff on the Beastmaster. He walked right past me; the only shot I got off that hit anything hit Lorne."

"Not your fault." Gunn rushed to defend her, and Wesley was nodding along in agreement. It made her feel worse; she wanted someone to tell her off so she could stop doing it to herself.

"Well, whatever," Faith interjected. "Point is he's gone, so let's suit up and head after him."

Like a switch the words set the three warriors to motion collecting, inspecting, and equipping gear from the numerous weapons cabinets.

Fred just shifted from one foot to the other, feeling wretched. When she felt she had buried her shame deep enough that it wouldn't affect her work, she looked around for something to do. Her eyes found the Red Death burrito on the couch and she felt that bone deep curiosity that she had never been able to resist. She walked over and pulled back the cloth that veiled his face.

Wes had told her over the phone that the Red Death had a human form, but everything she had heard since then had painted a very different picture than the one she was presented with now.

She certainly hadn't expected him to look so young; he seemed little more than a teenager. He was broad-shouldered and muscular, with bronze skin that spoke of a lot of time in the sun. He had wavy, raven hair that fell over his eyes just a little and Fred found she had to squash a sudden, irrational desire to touch his sleeping face.

What the heck was that? Was it something demon-y or was it just plain-old hotness?

When no other bizarre urges were forthcoming, she chalked it up to the latter.

He looks like all the boys I was never brave enough to speak to in high school.

The sound of a shotgun being cocked broke her day dream. She turned and saw Wesley inspecting a single-barrel pump action.

"What're you doing with that?" Faith asked, stalking toward Wesley, her voice low and dangerous.
"Changing the game." He replied nonchalantly.
"I thought we weren't going for the kill." Faith reminded him, none too subtly.
"We're not," Wesley countered, still keeping his eyes on the shotgun. "But if we get another chance, I want slow him down long enough to tranq him."
"By blowing his legs off?" Fred interjected, her expression turning horrified.
"You want some help with that?" Gunn added, forcing Fred to turn her horrified expression on him.
"No," Wesley finally looked up from the gun as he spoke to Gunn and Fred. "I need someone I trust to watch the hotel. Someone who can actually hurt Angelus."

Fred's gaze found the floor again.
"Oh, I'm all over that." Gunn said, his face neutral but a vicious confidence in his voice.

"What are we gonna do about him?" Fred asked, her head tilting just enough to indicate the sleeping Red Death.

"Ah, right. We should move him down into the cage; you can keep an eye on him from there." Wesley said, leaning the shotgun against the wall.

Fred chewed her bottom lip.

"Are you sure that's a good idea, Wes? I mean, I know you're worried that this guy might be a bigger bad than the Beast, but while you and Faith were out I've been doing some research...well, Lorne and I have been researching, by which I mean Lorne called a lot of people he knew and I mainly took notes and drew some graphs, and the data is really not exact 'cause in all the confusion it's hard to get a proper account from anyone, not to mention the people who are just repeating things they heard someone hear someone say-"

Everyone was staring at Fred, and she almost wished for a second that Angelus or someone would come by and put her out of her mortified misery.

"What I mean is," she began again. "I've been running the numbers and, now keep in mind we're talking huge margin of error here, if it weren't for the Red Death's presence through the blackout, the death toll would be somewhere between one to two thousand percent higher."

Everyonewas staring at her in stunned silence again, but at least this time she approved of the reason for their shock.

Faith was the first to recover.

"Damn. Since killing the Beast, the lazy bastard's been coastin'." She smirked.

"Well," Wesley managed "that certainly adds some weight to the 'he's good' side of the scale. Even so, I still think the safest course, given that we've decided not to kill him, is the cage. If he does turn out to be on our side, we can sort it all out when he wakes up."

"And if waking up to steel bars gives him a lethally bad first impression of us?" Faith spat.

"It's a risk we'll have to take; besides, with the sanctuary spell in place, he shouldn't be able to harm anyone." Wesley said with finality.

"Famous last words." Gunn snorted.

"Doesn't anyone else think it's strange that he's still asleep?" Fred asked, her nose scrunching in concentration. "If his surface wounds closed as fast as you said, you'd think he'd be fully healed by now."

"I agree," Wesley nodded. "Still, there could be any number of reasons. Until we know for sure what he is, we could speculate forever."

"Maybe he's cursed, waiting on true love's kiss or something." Faith was grinning wickedly again. "Worth a shot, right?"

At least no one's looking at me like a nut case anymore, Fred thought.

"Hey, I've been in jail for nearly two years," Faith told the odd faces the others were giving her. "What's your excuse?"

She was looking directly at Wesley, who quickly found an excuse to look anywhere else.

"Right well, let's get a move on." Wesley stammered. "Gunn, give me a hand."

The two carried the Red Death down to the basement, Fred staring bewildered after them.

"Don't worry about it," Faith said, sounding much too amused. "Inside joke between me and Sourpuss." She reached down to her belt and brandished a wicked looking black dagger, blade gleaming with crimson blood.

"Here," she handed it to Fred, explaining: "The blood on it belongs to our mystery boy down there. Wes said he wants info so, I figure you can like, analyze the blood or something."

Fred brightened as she took the knife gingerly by the handle.

"Actually, I may be able to do just that."

"Cool." Faith couldn't help but be infected by Fred's own smile.

At that moment, Wesley and Gunn came back into the lobby.

"Ok," Faith started. "Everyone's got something to do. Ready, Wes?"

Wesley nodded and collected his equipment.

"Let's bounce," Faith began to head toward the door. As Wesley followed, he stopped suddenly and turned to Fred.

"Be careful," he whispered in a way that made her breath catch. "Next time he comes back, he might be carrying the real thing." He tilted his head ever so slightly to indicate the fake charm she still held in her hand.

Gunn adjusted his grip on his weapon and Wesley left.

Good luck, Fred thought.

"Hey!" Clark cried out. The Red Death turned and Clark realized he was staring into his own face. It was his face, but for the eyes that burned a deep crimson and the bloody handprint that lay like war paint over his face.

"Clark," Clark said.

"Clark? What are you doing here?" The Red Death asked him. Clark reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out Captain Action, handing it over to the hands of the Red Death, red and dripping with blood.

"You forgot this," Clark said. "You left it behind."

The Red Death just stared at the action figure in his hand before swiftly crushing it in his fist.

"No!" Clark cried out, dropping to the floor to collect the pieces of his hero as they fell.

"What did you do?" he asked in horror as he looked at the hopelessly dismembered body of Captain Action.

"Isn't it obvious?" The Red death asks, a genuine confusion in his voice as he looked around at the bodies pilled high around him. "I killed all the monsters, I saved the world."

"Okay, it's all right," Clark says frantically. "It's going to be fine, I can fix this, no problem. I can do this. All I need to do is be true."

He grasps the pieces of Captain Action tight and gets up.

"Don't go anywhere," he tells the Red Death. "Please, just stay here, I promise I can fix everything, just stay."

Clark runs all the way back home, careful not to drop anything.

"Mom? Dad?"

Clark cries out. No one answers. He goes into the house and places the pieces of Captain Action on the table before running through the house, checking every room.

"Mom? Dad? I need your help, it's Captain Action, he needs our help!"

No one is home. Clark couldn't waste anymore time. He scrambled, grabbing everything he thought might help, glue, string, tape, anything he could, and set them on the table next to the Captain.

"Don't worry Captain, everything is going to be fine, I'm going to save you."

Clark starts trying to piece the Captain back together, but nothing he tries works. The glue won't hold, the string comes undone, and the tape just ends up a wadded mess.

"Come on, Captain," Clark pleads. "We can do this, don't give up." he frantically tries again and again to reattach the broken pieces.

"Heroes never give up, Captain. That's what you said, you told me that the good guys never quit. So come on, don't give up. Don't give up on me, Captain. Just believe in me, Captain, I can do it if you believe in me! We can be heroes again! All I need to do-"

The broken pieces fall from Clark's hopeless fingers and clatter on the table top yet again. Clark drops his hands to the cold wood.

"All I need to do is be true." He whispers.

There's nothing Clark can do, the toy is broken beyond his ability to repair. Clark gathers up the pieces and arranges them as properly as possible, carrying the body outside in his hands as gingerly as he can. He walks far out into the field and kneels down into the dirt. He lays the Captain to one side to free his hands.

Clark pushes deep into the earth and scoops out as much as he can, digging down until he has a hole large enough and deep enough.

Then Clark Kent buries his hero, laying him down and pushing the soil back over the Captain's confidently grinning face.

Clark knelt there.

"All I need to do is be true," he whispered.

It started to rain.

As Clark Kent stirred to sudden wakefulness, he reached a hand up to touch his face, it came back wet.

Was I...crying?

His mouth tasted strange, cottony, and he was in jail. All sensory input seemed to reach his brain from incredibly far away. He also felt like he had just been in the middle of something, but he couldn't quite recall what it was.

Was I dreaming?

But everything after the Beast and the fading light was blank.

As things began to recalibrate themselves properly, he realized he was definitely behind bars of some kind, but it wasn't a prison of any official capacity.

He sat up and saw that he had both a jailer and a cellmate.

"Rip van Winkle wakes," his jailer said.

The man was in his late twenties by his look, african-american, with a shaved head, wearing a denim jacket over a black t-shirt and blue denim jeans. It was hardly any sort of formal security wear.

So probably not the government or private corporation or any of the other many entities I usually have in this nightmare.

Clark took a long breath to steady himself and resist the impulse to go bursting out of the cage. He couldn't be sure what these people knew or what they thought they knew, and no good would come from confirming anything.

Clark dragged himself over to the wall and sagged against it, trying to look exhausted.

He leaned his head back against the wall, to hide how rapidly his eyes would move, and the world around him slowed to a crawl as his perception kicked into overdrive . He peered right up through the ceiling into a spacious building. A hotel, going by the number of rooms.

He confirmed it a second later when he peered through the hotel and saw a street sign that read The Hyperion.

Shifting his focus back into the lobby, he saw three people. A young, wispy, brunette in glasses, a redheaded woman and a man Clark recognized. It was the same man he had seen fighting two vampires outside the warehouse where Clark had killed the beast. They were surrounded by some bizarre props: a glass orb, lots of bundles of sticks, incense, a brass bell. Clark sees a stack of business cards on the counter that read "Angel Investigations".

A P.I. service?

He finds a spacious back office filled with ancient looking books with odd titles, numerous papers, and a microscope with a blood sample on the slide, his blood, he figured once he saw the black bone dagger the Beast had plunged into his heart sitting on a table right next to the microscope.

I wonder…

Clark focused his vision a little more on the cover of a book, pushing through it to the pages beyond. He rapidly goes through the books, some of which are in strange languages he has never seen, but all of them about demons and the arcane.

He finds a cabinet filled with what appear to be case files and he reads through those as well.

"Hey, you ok?"

Clark blinks as he looks up at his captor eyeing him suspiciously.

From his perspective, it must have seemed like I totally zoned out for five minutes. Probably a little suspicious.

Clark closes his eyes to organize the massive surge of information he had just processed. He thought he felt a headache coming on, it had been a while since his last one. When he opens his eyes and sees his captor again new information floods into his conscious mind and he realizes who he's looking at.

Charles Gunn.

He looks to the dark haired man in the leather jacket that thrashed and turned unconscious, in heavy chains on the floor of Clark's cage.

Angel

His eyes find the three in the lobby again.

Winifred "Fred" Burkle, Wesley Wyndam-Pryce, and the red-head is… she fits the description of one "Willow Rosenberg".

His gaze moves up to the second floor. In one room a young, pregnant woman and a boy about his age are talking.

Cordelia Chase, Connor...

His gaze slides over to another room where a green-skinned demon in an expensive suit is tending an unconscious girl on the bed.

Lorne, and Faith, the Slayer I met fighting the Beast.

As he identified them each in turn, the new information he had gained swarmed him.

Sister turned into a vampire, vampire with a soul, spent years in another dimension, Witch, Angel's son, born of two vampires, also spent years in another dimension, ascended to higher plane of existence, originally from another dimension, spent the past two years in prison for murder…

All this and more started bouncing around his head, the connections opening other connections.

Those things on the table are part of the spell to return a soul to a body, which Miss Rosenberg once did years ago.

Soul, metagenetics of the soul, the soul eating beast, beasts of the Qha'halla tales, tales of the First Ones…

Clark groaned and felt the strangest impulse to poke a hole in his own head to relieve the steady, throbbing pressure deep inside. Clark had learned long ago that his brain processes information differently, more holistically than human brains. When a human read a page, they went reading each word one by one. Clark could read the entire page at once, his brain taking it in as a whole and then simultaneously taking in, identifying, and organizing the individual words.

It certainly made studying easier. Page one, read, page two, read, add in his incredible speed and Clark could go through textbooks in seconds. Once in the eighth grade, Clark had wanted to see how long it would take him to go through every book in every library in his county. He figured it would probably take a day.

If this is the reaction I'm having to just a few dozen books, it's a good thing mom and dad convinced me that a young boy flipping through every book in a library would look suspicious.

Clark supposed he would have to deal with the migraine for a bit while his brain organized all the new information.

Could be worse, could be meteor rock.

Mr. Gunn was still eyeing him.

He's scared too, he's not sure what I'll do.

Clark was much more calm, now that he knew who he was with.

Nothing they have here has to do with aliens, so I'm guessing that right out the bat they're going to assume I'm some kind of demon. Still, they have my blood, and that might be a problem.

"Hey," Mr. Gunn called to him. "Anybody in there?"

"Where am I?" Clark asked. Somewhere in the back of his mind he heard the little voice of Lex Luthor saying "Never let anyone know how much you know, or don't know."

Lex had spent a lot of the time they had known each other trying to teach Clark the ways of ruthlessness. Clark supposed it was part of the "big brother" persona Lex had assumed over him, trying to prepare Clark for what Lex thought of as the "big, bad, real world."

"You're in the Hyperion Hotel," Mr. Gunn replied.

Well at least they're being honest. Still, best to move carefully. All the evidence so far says they may be the "good guys", but it seems like this Beast that I had to kill had them all freaked out. Thinking about it from their point of view, I must be a pretty scary thing.

The Little Lex in his head said "Good, use their fear to your advantage," but Clark didn't want to be feared. It made him a little sick to see the way Mr. Gunn, this total stranger, looked at him like he was a sleeping tiger, ready to leap out and rend flesh at the slightest provocation. Clark fought a sigh.

For a second there I thought...I hoped...well, whatever, not the time for this.

Clark pushed his straying emotions down; they could only get in the way here.

"Why am I here?' he asked.

Mr. Gunn waited a moment before answering, body still tense and ready to spring.

"Sorry, nothing personal. It's just you kinda come in out of nowhere, shooting fire from your eyes and beating down the Beast, the scariest thing we've ever met ever, like it was your red-headed stepchild. So, you're gonna have to excuse us for taking some precautions."

Clark felt a defensive anger rise in him at the accusatory tone. It's not my fault you can't deal with me or how I am!

But he knew that was just petulance, if the position were reversed, he supposed he would be pretty terrified too. Give a little to get a little.

"Okay," Clark took a steadying breath "What do you want to know?"

Mr. Gunn seemed taken aback, but then he relaxed a little too. He was about to speak when Connor came down the stairs into the basement.

"Hey, Gunn, you should know," he begins "they haven't finished the spell yet-" Connor's fist comes flying up too quickly for anyone but Clark to follow, crashing into Gunn's jaw with a solid thud, sending the older man flying off his feet to fall unconscious onto the floor.

What the heck? Clark just looks on, bewildered. Clearly, I'm missing something here.

Connor notices him slumped in his corner and starts.

"You...you're awake."

"I'm awake," Clark confirms.

Conner hesitates, not having counted on the Red Death being awake. A stake drops into his hand.

"Don't interfere, this doesn't concern you." Connor pulls his hand back, aiming a shot between the bars and right for Angelus' heart.

"I need you to fight," His father wheezes, unconsciously.

Clark stands, still unsure of what, exactly was happening. If he throws the stake, I move. He couldn't be sure it was the right decision, but as far as Clark was concerned, better to save a guilty man than let an innocent die.

Connor saw the Red Death rise.

"Stay out of this!" he warned again.

Then a blur of black leather flew down the stairs and grabbed Connor's readied arm.

"Well break me off a switch, Son," Faith said as she threw connor to the ground with one arm. "There's about to be a whoopin'."

No! Connor thinks, I'm so close.

He rushes at Faith, coming in with a wide swing to her right. She steps inside the swing and blocks before returning two jabs of her own to his chest, knocking him back. They engage again and trade rapid blows, soon Lorne, Fred, and Wesley have also run down into the basement.

"She's alive-" Lorne stammers, as stunned as everyone else "I-it's a miracle?"

Faith knocks Connor back against the cage and Connor growls deep in his throat as he prepares to launch off the bars and throw himself at Faith. Suddenly he finds himself encircled by powerful arms that pin him back against the cage. He struggles and flails but he can't break the grip.

"Connor, it's over," His father whispers behind him. It's me, really…"

Connor stops struggling and sags a little as the adrenaline burns itself out with nothing to do.

Hip, hip, hooray, Connor thinks, sourly.

Everyone just stood there in that shocked silence.

Well, Clark thought, I once woke up floating a foot above my bed, but this one is definitely going down as a contender for "weirdest wake up".

"Angel!" Fred cried out, rushing forward excitedly before Wesley's heavy hand on her shoulder stopped her.

"Wait," he said. "We've been fooled before."

Fred paled a little at the memory.

"Not to mention…" he continued.

She didn't need him to finish the thought. She could see him standing in the far corner, the Red Death. He seemed so unthreatening, standing there in his bright primary colors and his confused face. His eyes met hers, a startlingly deep blue that she hadn't seen while he slept. He raised his hands slowly in a gentle shrug.

"Hey," he said, "don't look at me, I just woke up."

"Well damn," Faith all but sauntered over. "I thought the glowing red was impressive, but those navy blues are devastating."

"Uh...thanks?" The Red Death, probably the most powerful being any of them had ever met, minutely inspected his toes, just like any other embarrassed kid.

Looking like that, it seems almost impossible to think of him as anything other than a kid, let alone as somehow evil. But Wesley was right, they'd been fooled before.

"Lorne," Wesley turned to their resident empath, "Think you can read them?"

Lorne sighed wearily, "I honestly don't know, Wes. My mojo's been way off for a while now. Last time I read Angel I was sure it was him, and look what happened."

Wesley grimaced.

"Your choice, Wes," Angel spoke up from in the cage, "but it's not like we don't know that Willow can restore my soul, she's done it before."

"And the Beastmaster did try to stop us," Fred added, just wanting the whole nightmare to be done. "Why do that if it wasn't going to work?"

"Maybe that's exactly what it wants us to think, so that we'd let our guard down again." Wesley said, playing devil's advocate.

"And maybe," Angel countered "It wants you to think that it wants you to think that so that you'll leave me stuck in here and it can go gallivanting about, doing whatever it wants. You can chase that tail of logic till the end of the world, Wes."

Which could be any minute now.

Wesley thought a moment more, searching for anything else he might be missing.

"Let him out," he finally said.

"Let us both out," Angel corrected.

"Angel, I may have a pretty good reason to believe it's you," Wesley's face became a hard grimace "but I don't know anything at all about the 'Red Death' in there."

"Don't call me that," Clark demanded, a scowl almost equal to Wesley's on his face. "I hate that name."

Angel turned to him, "You really do, don't you?" Turning back to Wesley, Angel said "look, Wes, these things," he knocks on the iron bars "aren't going to hold him. he's only still here out of courtesy, isn't that right?"

Clark just shrugged, not wanting to confirm or deny anything.

Wesley stared at them both for a long time before turning back to Lorne.

"I'd like you to go ahead and read them anyway. It might not help, but it probably won't hurt."

Lorne just shrugged and descended the concrete steps, stopping in front of the cell bars.

"Okay, Angel Cake, you know the drill."

Angel cleared his throat before letting out an off-tune melody.

"You know I can't smile without you,

I can't smile without you,

I can't laugh and I can't sing,

I'm finding it hard to do anything,

You see I feel sad when you're sad,

I feel glad when you're glad,

If you only knew what I'm going through,

I just can't smile without you,"

"Well," Lorne interrupted, "he seems like Angel, tone deafness and all." He turned to the Red Death. "You're turn, Imma need you to sing for me."

An empathic demon that can learn your destiny by hearing you sing, sing, songs of the Hollatan demons of east Peru, the Peruvis Codex, Codes of the Katani religious sect- ow!

Clark shook his head to clear it.

"Do I really have to sing?" he asked.

"That's how it works, kiddo. Don't worry, however bad you think you are, trust me, you've never had to listen to a Thyvos demon belt out Abba." Lorne had seen that same look a hundred times, simple stage fright.

"Okay, so long as you're all ready to have your ears melt off..that was a joke," he added sadly when he saw their expressions.

Here goes nothing.

"What if I was just a song?

Words on a page to sing - a song

What if my essence was pure -

Pure mathematics no more

than a romance from a store?

Would you still cry when I played?

Would you still turn to me for the pain

If I were just a song?"

Lorne held up a hand to stop him.

"That'll do just fine. See, it wasn't so hard as all that." he turned to Wesley.

"As far as I can tell, Kid's definitely on our side."

Wes waited a moment longer before nodding. The door was opened and the Angel Investigations team welcomed their leader back with mostly enthusiasm. They woke Gunn up and together they, and Clark, all left the dank basement and went into the lobby where Willow was waiting.

"I take it my spell worked?" She smiled at the crowd, finding a tall figure she had only seen before through the basement camera monitor. "And you must be the Red Death-"

"He hates that name-"

"I hate that name-"

Clark and Angel both spoke in unison.

"Oh," Willow continued "You know, I could prolly have been a 'Red Death' too, cause I went kinda evil for a while, but my hair turned black so maybe that wouldn't work and I mean I guess I could be the 'Black Death', but with the whole bubonic plague thing people would just be drawing inaccurate associations and-...um, I'll shut up now."

Fred shot her new friend a look of babbler solidarity.

"Well," Angel jumped in "I think a little bit of share time is in order, so everyone may as well get comfortable."

Angel gave Clark a very abridged version of who he and his team were, telling him that they were paranormal investigators and giving him a review of the recent events involving the Beast and the search for the Beastmaster. A lot of this and more Clark had learned already from the files that had finally stopped buzzing around his head. Willow went next and a lot of what she had to say was new to Clark. Nothing in the hotel had recent information on the happenings of the Sunnydale Hellmouth.

"The First Evil?" Clark asked, skeptical. "Is that legitimate?'

"My thoughts too," Willow admitted "I mean, I've had contact with this thing, and it certainly feels like it could be the concentrated essence of all things bad, no matter how odd a notion that is. Still, phony or not, its power is real, and it's bad news, apocalypse bad...actually, considering how many apocalypses we have to deal with, we probably need a separate scale for measuring apocalypse severity. It'd prolly be pretty high up on it. We could actually use all the help we can get, I mean, I know you guys are busy with the whole 'Beastmaster' thing but,"

Willow's eyes slid slowly over to Faith, who shrugged.

"Hey, if you guys think you need me, I'm all for it."

Clark was still in deep thought when he realized that everyone had been quietly waiting on him for a while now. He felt his chest tighten in anxiety.

"Okay, my turn then...to be honest, a lot of stuff is still a mystery to me. I've pretty much always been like this." He shrugged helplessly.

Wesley was giving him a scrutinizing look..

"And your parents never said anything to you?"

"I'm adopted, my parents found me abandoned by a roadside."

Wesley and Angel exchanged a knowing look.

"I think you might be a half-demon." Angel finally said.

"Well," Clark rubbed the back of his head, "I guess it kinda looks that way, huh?" He didn't need to fake the pained twinge in his voice. He might have preferred being a half-demon, at least then he'd be part human.

"It's not as bad as all that," Angel said, sympathetically. "Being a half-demon doesn't make you evil."

"So you have no idea what kind of demon you might be?" Wesley asked.

Clark shook his head. "I didn't even know demons were real until I came here during the blackout."

"Really?" Wesley asked, puzzled. "You've never met a demon before, ever? Where did you grow up?"

Clark waited a beat before shaking his head again. "Sorry, I can't tell you that."

Wesley opened his mouth to retort but Angel stopped him with a hand.

"It's ok, Wes."

"It's not about trusting you or not trusting you," Clark hurried to explain. "It's just...there are other people, friends and family, that I have to protect."

"We'd never put people in danger!" Fred cried, indignant.

Clark couldn't meet her eye and Angel stepped in to spare him.

"It's not about that, Fred. You know how things can get around here, we don't always have a choice in the matter. Hell, I was soulless just a few hours ago and as much as it makes me sick to admit, it's a good thing for everyone that I don't know where your families live, because then Angelus would have known too."

Fred's eyes went wide with silent horror.

"Don't worry," Angel told Clark, "we're not interested in your personal life. I am curious though, if you didn't know about the supernatural, how did you know to be here when the blackout started?"

"I didn't," Clark was relieved the conversation had shifted away from his home. "When the blackout happened, I figured something weird was definitely going on, and at the very least with all the lights out the streets would probably dissolve into anarchy." He gave another helpless shrug. "I guess I just figured I'd try to help if I could."

That, at least, is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

He shrank a little under their wide, disbelieving stares. Their cosmic salvation story had just admitted to have been more or less "just passing through".

"So, if you don't like the 'Red Death', what do we call you?" Agel asked.

Clark's mind once again accelerated until everything around him was almost still.

He obviously couldn't tell them his full name. He considered using his birth name, Kal-El, but decided that was too close to the mark as well. Who knew how many people besides Dr. Swann had gotten that message from his home planet. He even considered an alias like Klaatu, or Valentine Smith, but decided they were a little too close to the mark.

"Just call me Clark." He finally decided, figuring there were a lot of Clark's in the world and trying to keep track of a second identity would be unnecessarily complicated.

The game of twenty questions continued, and Clark obfuscated where he could. They asked about his powers and Clark told the truth when he said he wasn't sure of their exact parameters, it wasn't like there had been anywhere in Smallville that could have served as a good testing site. They knew about the strength, the speed, the toughness, and the heat vision, though he had to refute having a host of other strange powers that had been attributed to the Red Death by demon rumormongers. He told them he had once lifted up the front of a truck; he just didn't tell them he had done it as a baby. He told them he had once run from his house all the way to his school; he just didn't tell them he had outraced the bus. He told them he had once been bruised by a bullet; he just didn't mention that it had been a year ago and ever since even point blank uzi fire just bounced off without a scratch. It helped that they'd seen him hurt taking down the Beast, in their minds they set his powers at a similar level. He never brought up x-ray vision at all.

When they were satisfied, another silence came over the group as everyone tried to process. Clark saw Willow giving him an appraising look and shifted uncomfortably. She turned to Angel, who was staring into space with an intently.

"Hey, Angel," she said, "can I talk to you for a second?"

Angel snapped out of it and nodded, walking out through the back of the hotel to a patio that overlooked a garden in the rear of the Hyperion's grounds.

"Well, since we're having talks," Gunn said, eyeing Connor, who just grumbled to himself.

"If I've learned anything from years in a club business, it's how to spot a trend." Lorne said, heading toward the front entrance, motioning with one hand for Clark to follow.

I hope this isn't about what I think it's about. Clark thought, apprehensive as he followed the empathic demon outside.

They stepped out into the cool night and Clark couldn't help his smile. He could see the stars. Lorne followed his gaze and laughed warmly.

"You did good kid, no doubt about that. Still, coming here may have been a mistake."

Clark sighed; it was what he feared after all.

"Emotions and such aren't the only thing I get a read on when people sing for me; I can see their destinies too. I thought you might want to know."

Clark sighed and paced the walkway, rubbing the back of his neck.

"I appreciate you talking to me about this in private, but if I'm being honest, I'm not sure I do want to know."

Lorne just nodded and leaned against the wall next to the door as Clark continued to pace.

"Okay," Clark finally said. "Let me hear it."

Lorne sighed, which wasn't a good sign, as far as Clark was concerned. People you never want to sigh before telling you something: your significant other, your doctor, and your fortune teller.

"Well, to be honest, yours is the trickiest case I've ever had before. You got real power in you, Kid, and talent too. So much so that you can do pretty much whatever you want, your future is a mess of cross-hatching paths and divergent possibilities. I will say this though; no way do you not wind up a big player. The decisions you make are gonna have far reaching effects on a lot of people, for good or for bad."

Clark frowned.

"I don't want to do any of that."

Lorne couldn't seem to muster his usual cheery demeanor, he knew the kid was going to hate what he had to say, and that was never fun for Lorne.

"I know you don't, not fully, but the truth is you don't have it in you to run away from the things to come."

Clark stopped pacing.

"How will I know," he all but rasped. "How will I know what the right choice is?"

Lorne sighed again; it seemed a sighing sort of night, which it shouldn't be. The endless black was gone and the Beast was dead, god dammit. They should all be out with neon colored drinks and karaoke. He shouldn't have to be here telling a scared teenager that he was going to have to decide the fate of the world.

"You won't," he finally said. "All you'll be able to do is what you always do, the only thing anyone can do, just do what you think is right."

Lorne went back inside, sensing that Clark needed some space.

Clark stood on that walkway, listening to the returning traffic, looking at the dims stars through the smoggy night sky, feeling a sick unease.

Nothing good will come of worrying about it, he finally decides. I'm not that big on the concept of destiny anyway, who knows how accurate it is? What I do know is that standing here wondering about all the things that may or may not happen is only paralyzing me.

With that he took in a deep breath, infusing it with all his tension and anxiety, expelling them as he slowly exhaled. He walked back into the hotel to find Gunn glaring at Connor.

"I get it," Connor mumbled. "I messed up."

"Cheer up, punk," Faith ribbed as she and Angel walked back in from the garden. "That just makes you one of us."

Gunn cracked a smile at her.

"You headed out?"

"Yeah," Faith high-fived Gunn. "No tears, big guy."

"Nah, I'm good," Gunn snorted before returning his glare to Connor. "Just wish I could've seen you kicking the crap out of junior, here."

Now it was Faith's turn to smirk slyly as she eyed Connor. "It was pretty funny."

Connor just rolled his eyes.

"Everything okay?" Angel asked, addressing Clark and Lorne. Lorne nodded and Clark just shrugged. Angel was curious, but he knew and respected that anything between Lorne and a "patient" was private...except for that one time that one guy had almost accidentally destroyed the world.

Faith walked over to Wesley and an uncertain chilliness entered her stance.

"Wes," she said.

"Faith," he replied.

"See?" She smirked, "Brits know how to say goodbye. Angel here wanted to hug."

"What?' Angel spluttered, "No I didn't!"

"Been a good show," she continued, heedless.

"Yeah," Gunn scoffed. "Sit back and let the girl do all the heavy lifting."

"That's pretty much it," Wesley can't help a rare smile.

Fred and Willow walk out of the back office, Fred chatting almost giddily.

"I think that volume's outdated. You'd know better than me, but there's some interesting stuff about HellmouthS. Might help."

"This is great," Willow said, looking down at the thick book Fred had given her.

"I have to say," Fred continued. "Someday I'd love to bend your ear about the Pergamum Codex. I—I think some of the really obscure passages are actually Latin translated from a demonic tongue, and they're kind of a hoot," she giggles. "All this stuff about Bacchanals and spells and—actually, I think it's probably funnier in Latin. You know how that is sometimes."

"I'm seeing someone," Willow interjects, her face conciliatory and full of pathos probably lost on the look of absolute confusion thAT comes over Fred's.

"Oh…" she says.

Willow sees Clark and takes advantage of the segue.

"Hey Clark, I wanted to ask you something-" she pauses, like she's mentally writing up a sales pitch. Clark decides to spare her.

"You want me to go help you fight the First?"

"Yeah," she grinned sheepishly.

What Clark wanted to do was go home, see his mom and dad, his friends, maybe lay down in the loft and freak out for a while over everything that had happened during his time in L.A.

"If it's as bad as you say it is, I want to help," he said.

"You don't have it in you to run away from the things to come" Lorne had told him. Clark felt very tired all of a sudden.

"Are you sure that's a good idea?" Wesley asked, turning to Angel, "We could certainly use someone like The Red-...someone like Clark here with us."

"That's a different tune from the one you were singing before, Wes," Faith needled.

"Yes, and I stand by my words in the previous context. Now that the situation has changed however, I'm allowed to change my mind. We still don't know who the Beastmaster is or what they're up to, we just know that they are very powerful and having Clark here could help even the odds, if not tip them in our favor."

Angel shook his head.

"No, I think we can handle the rest ourselves."

"And this has nothing to do with Buffy being in Sunnydale?" Wesley pushes.

Angel gave him an even look until Wesley had to look away.

"I know better than anyone how competent Buffy is, but I also know the First. I've touched it, and it's touched me, so believe me when I say she's going to need all the help she can get."

"I just knew your dark and troubled past had to include some bad touching, Angel." Angel shifted his glare onto Faith, who just smirked wider.

"Like I said," Clark tried to diffuse the situation. "I'm still totally new to this whole thing, but I do want to help, so just tell me where you guys think I could help the most and I'll follow your lead."

Angel waited to hear more objections, but none arose so he nodded to Clark.

"Go with Willow and Faith."

"Whoa, time out," Faith turned to Willow. "Wills, the way you're describing the situation to me, we have a small house filled with teenage girls, potential Slayers, who have been crammed together for the past several weeks jacked up on ' die-at-any-moment adrenaline and junk food with no guys at all except for Giles and Xander, and you want to bring in that?" She pointed at Clark who coughed and shifted uncomfortably at her implication.

He was getting smirks all around now, even from Fred. It felt like a betrayal, when he'd first met her, Clark had been sure she was a fellow dork.

I'm glad everyone's having such a good time at my expense, he thought, drily. Though, when the thought about it again, he figured maybe it really was a good thing. These people, himself included, had all seemed to have more or less been through hell. Maybe that was the secret. Maybe that was why movies always had these action heroes who couldn't resist making quips in the middle of flying Bullets.

Laugh the pain away.

Willow was looking at him almost uncertainly.

"Don't be silly, Faith. Some people in this world actually have self control…" she almost sounded convinced.

Faith just put her hands up in surrender.

"Whatever you say, Will. Just let the record show I put in my two cents."

"Okay, well," Clark quickly tried to change the topic. "Now that that's settled and I'll be going to Sunnydale, I was wondering…"

Wait, how am I going to say this without revealing the x-ray vision?

"Did you guys take a blood sample?"

Fred suddenly perked up.

"Oh my gosh, I totally forgot."

"How did you know about the blood sample?" Wesley asked suddenly.

"I didn't," Clark replied, just as quickly. "I do now. It made sense; I mean I got wounded pretty bad. I would have taken a blood sample if I were you."

Wesley still looked suspicious, but he didn't say anything else so Clark continued.

"I don't suppose I could get that back? I mean, it's kind of a weird thought, knowing someone else has your blood, and can't people use it for spells and such?"

"I thought you were unaware of the supernatural until you came here, how did you know about that?" Wesley asked.

"Internet," Clark immediately replied. It was true too; he had needed to do some research into magical theory for one of his friend Chloe's more occult based projects.

"The internet?" Wesley scoffed, "you can't expect me to buy that."

Boy, this guy is testy. Testy Wesley, that's him.

But if Clark understood anything, it was suspicion.

Surprisingly, Willow saved him the trouble of needing to defend himself.

"I buy that. A lot of the info on the net is all hokey, but a lot of the really basic stuff, the laws of contagion and sympathy, 'as above, so below', can be found in a five minute google search. Plus, it's in all the movies."

Wesley looked like he wanted to push more, but he refrained. With a nod from Angel, Fred went into the back office, followed by Faith.

Fred came back first, gingerly carrying a small glass slide which she handed to Clark.

"Thank you," he hesitated before adding, "Did you learn anything?"

His voice was softly pleading and Fred felt genuine sadness. She could understand wanting answers, she had known this feeling all her life. She could hardly imagine what it must have been like to not even have answers about yourself, about something as simple as your basic biology.

"Sorry," she told him. "I'm not really equipped here to do any extensive research. All I can say is that those cells are unlike anything I've seen before, but they are the most energetic cells I've ever seen."

Clark sighed and gave her a warm smile. Fred found she had to turn away to hide a little flush.

Oh god, he's a teenager, what is wrong with me?

Faith strolled back in carrying the Beast's bone dagger in her hand.

"Catch," she called as she tossed it into the air.

Clark snatched it by the handle as it came near him.

"Figured if this belongs to anybody," Faith explained, "it belongs to you. It doesn't have your name on it per-say, but it's go the next best thing. Consider it a trophy."

Clark grimaced as he looked over the grisly dagger, blade covered in his blood.

"Must be Christmas."

He hadn't realized he said it out loud until Faith laughed.

"See, that's the attitude."

Willow nodded at him approvingly.

"We'll make a Scooby of you yet," she said. Then, turning to the others, she said;

"OK. Good. Wagons west. See you guys."

Angel Stepped forward

"Willow…" he began.

"He's going to tell you how much he owes you," Faith cut in.

Willow gave him a warm, energetic smile.

"Aw, don't mention it. I got a slayer and a…" she paused as she looked at Clark and all known categorization failed her, "and a new friend," she finally decided, "out of the deal, so we're even-steven..."

She walked over to Angel and hugged him.

"I'll tell Buffy you said 'hi'."

"Good," the hug seemed to have surprised Angel, but he returned it affectionately. "Thanks".

The Sunnydale-bound trio started to walk out, but Willow stopped mid-stride and turned around.

"Oh, um, next time you guys resurrect Angelus, call me first, OK?"

With that, Faith, Clark, and Willow left the Hyperion and headed out to Willow's car.

"Hey," Clark began as they got on the street and he spotted a payphone. "I know we're pressed for time, but do mind if I take a minute? I...need to call my parents."

For a second Willow thought about arguing, but she didn't have it in her. She gave him a kind smile and nodded.

Clark walked over to the payphone, and slid in some change. Punching in the ten digits he knew better than any other, E.T. phoned home.