"Doyle..."

The incredulous whisper lay there between them, half question, half desperate, confused, wondrous hope. Cordelia was overcome. This wasn't possible. It just wasn't possible. And yet...

And yet her fingers still traced lightly over the smooth coolness of his jacket. She could see the confused concern in his familiar eyes. She could feel his presence there in front of her . She could smell the lingering scent of his aftershave...a distinctive smell that had always reminded her of him, even now, two years after...

Suddenly it was just too much. Everything came crashing in, and she felt the tears in her eyes well up and spill over onto her cheeks. The shock and joy at seeing him alive precluded her displacement for the moment, and finally she could breathe, finally she could move. She rushed forward, throwing herself into his arms.

Startled, Doyle nonetheless instinctively hugged her back, something within him responding immediately to Cordelia's obvious emotion. He allowed her to hold him for a long moment, and then he gently took hold of her arms and pushed her far enough away from him to be able to look at her. "Uh, not that I don't wholeheartedly approve of yer spontaneous desire for a physical relationship, but're ya all right?" he asked again. "What happened? What..."

At this he finally noticed what was off about her. "What happened to yer hair?"

Cordelia gaped, and out of reflex a hand flew to her chin-length tresses. She was trying to figure out where in the world to start, when a sound from the back office drew their attention to the door. Doyle turned, and Cordelia looked on in shock as a young woman strode past them, her long, straight blond hair flowing lightly behind her. Her face was tanned and resolute. It was Buffy Summers. Without a word, or a glance, she walked out into the sunlight, shutting the door behind her.

Okay, Cordelia thought. What the......

~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~

"...hell is going on?" Cordelia demanded.

Around her Angel, Wesley, Gunn and Fred stood in varying degrees of surprised confusion; no one knew what to say. When Cordelia had come to, she'd acted startled and confounded by her surroundings, and didn't appear to recognize Fred or Gunn. She'd only calmed down a bit when she saw Angel, but she still wanted answers.

Wesley attempted to take control. "Now Cordelia, let's just calm down and be rational."

"Rational?" she said. "Oh I'm rational. I'm way rational. Look at me, Miss Rationality. I just want to know where the hell I am, and who all you people.....Wesley?"

Disconcerted again, Wesley replied slowly. "Yes..."

Cordelia looked confused. "I thought you went back to England?" Wesley frowned and looked contemplative at her question, and Cordelia shook her head, giving a little snort as if to say Whatever, I don't have time for this. She turned to Angel. "Is this some kind of prank to get back at me for telling Buffy where you were? Alright look, I'm sorry. But you don't exactly say no to a slayer, you know? And plus, she was right. You were going to get yourself killed facing that Mohra demon on your own."

Angel froze. "What?"

"'Cause let's face it," Cordelia went on, "Doyle isn't really the most efficient backup even when you're a vampire."

Angel stared at her. Blinking, he turned to Wesley. "What the hell is going on here?"

"That was my question!" Cordelia said in exasperation.

Wesley pondered. "I'm not exactly clear on what incident she's referring to, but as for the rest of it I'm afraid I might know what's happened." He turned to Cordelia. "What's the last thing you remember?"

Cordelia reluctantly put her questions on the back burner for a moment, and answered. "Well...Doyle found out that the Mohra demon's powers of regeneration were enough to actually bring it back to life. He came back and told Angel, and they went off after it together." She turned to Angel, apology on her face. "And then Buffy woke up and wanted to know where you went, and I had to tell her. You wouldn't have been strong enough to beat it on your own, Angel. Not as a human."

Fred and Gunn looked as one to Angel. "You were human?" Gunn asked.

Angel was speechless. Wesley turned to him, looking almost regretful at having to ask questions about a clearly troubled memory. "How long ago was this?"

Angel looked at him, then back at Cordelia. Then back at Wesley. "I...that's not possible. That day was taken away. No one remembers it but me. I mean…she knows about it…but not those details…"

"How long?" Wesley asked again.

Angel finally realized where he was going with this line of questioning and looked back at Cordelia with disbelief and wonder in his face. "Two years. To the day."

Wesley hmm'ed, and Gunn raised his hand. "So lemme get this straight," he said, disbelief glaringly obvious on his face. "This isn't the real Cordelia?"

"Hello? Standing right here?" Cordelia snapped. "Of course I'm real. Who are you, anyway? And shouldn't you be getting back to the Hilfiger shoot?"

Gunn swallowed, convinced. "This is bad," he concluded.

Wesley was deep in thought. Almost absently he replied, "This is indeed a grave dilemma..."

"Yeah, that too," Gunn cut in.

Wesley went on as if he hadn't heard. "It appears that the demon's gauntlet device triggered some sort of temporal displacement, and 'our' Cordelia, two thousand and one Cordelia, was replaced by an earlier version of herself. You," he said, turning to Cordelia, "are most definitely real...but you've been displaced."

"Well then re-place me!" she demanded.

"I'm afraid it's not that simple," he replied. "The demon that did this absconded with the gauntlet after blasting you...er...the other Cordelia with it."

Cordelia turned to Angel. "You let it get away?" she accused him.

Angel seemed to have recovered a bit. Now he looked uncomfortable. "Not let...I didn't let. I was uh..."

"Attacked by an evil sofa monster?" Gunn offered up.

Angel shot him a glare, and Wesley spoke again, a note of determination edging into his voice. "Our task now is clear. We must find the demon that did this, and discover his agenda."

~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~

Cordelia followed Doyle almost as an afterthought as he headed back toward Angel's office. Her brain was still on overload, and her thoughts didn't seem to make any sense as she tried to figure out what in the world was going on.

They entered the office to find the vampire standing there silently, melancholy etched into his features. The office was a mess, and Doyle whistled as he stepped over an overturned wastebasket and some crumpled papers. "She was pretty mad, ya?" he guessed. He started to say something supportive to Angel, but his voice seemed far away as Cordelia's gaze fell upon the broken clock on the floor. She recognized it; it was the one that used to sit on Angel's desk. She silently bent over and picked it up, noting that its face was smashed. Suddenly it all finally hit her. The blast from the gauntlet, Doyle, Buffy here, in L.A... Somehow, she was really here. Right here. Right now, in this time.

In her stunned moment of clarity, she didn't notice that Doyle had gone quiet. He looked from silent and thoughtful Cordelia, to silent and crushed Angel. Unaware of the temporal shift each of them had just undergone, he couldn't figure out why they were both so somber. He watched as Angel turned without a word and started toward the elevator.

Cordelia looked up at the movement. "I realize you want to go downstairs and brood right now," she said slowly, stopping him, "and I know that for once you've got a really good reason...but we've got a big problem."

~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~

"We've got a problem," Fred said.

"I'll say," Gunn replied, self consciously fingering his bright red zip-up vest, "Evil clone over there thinks I look like a Tommy Boy."

Cordelia glared from the sofa. "I heard that." She knew she'd been snappy, but she couldn't help it. She'd been unwillingly transported out of her time, and was now surrounded by people she didn't know. This, she thought, is what I get for hanging out with a vampire and his little Irish sidekick. "Hey," she said suddenly, her voice brightening a bit. "Where's Doyle?"

Angel and Wesley both looked up from the books they'd been flipping through, and glanced at each other briefly. Angel looked pained, and Wesley cleared his throat and changed the subject. "I think I understand now what the demon was attempting to do. Its focus wasn't Cordelia, as we already knew. She merely intercepted the blast meant for Angel. The loud noise we heard, and the failing of the electricity was due, I believe, to an electromagnetic pulse."

"An electro what?" Gunn asked.

"Electromagnetic," Wesley repeated. "It's a pulse of intense electromagnetic radiation, and I believe one was generated as a side effect by the demon's gauntlet. By nature, an EMP shorts out any electrically powered device within a fixed radius. That's why the lights went out." Here he paused, and took his glasses off thoughtfully as he reasoned it out. "And then when the emergency lights came on, we discovered that our Cordelia was gone, and in her place was a version of herself from two years ago. From a day we now know Angel existed as a human in." He looked around and waited for a comment, but everyone was waiting for him to continue. "I think what's happened here is obvious," he said. "The demon was trying to bring human Angel into the present. Most likely so that he'd be easier to kill."

"But how did anyone know?" Gunn asked. "Angel just said he was the only one who remembered the day."

"I don't know. All I can tell for certain from looking at the evidence is that Wolfram and Hart have been extremely interested in Angel since his arrival in L.A. In addition to taunting and provoking him, it's quite possible that they have some sort of monitoring system we're not yet aware of. If this demon was in fact connected with the firm in any way, it would indicate that their interest in him has now waned, and they wish him terminated. I hypothesize that this demon was contracted by Wolfram and Hart, and they made it aware of Angel's human weakness, two years ago. It then came here, planning to blast Angel with its gauntlet device, bringing the human version of himself into the future, so that he could be killed."

"Guys..." Fred tried again.

"Which begs the question," Angel said, straightening from the book he'd been leaning over, "If he'd succeeded, where would I have gone? Where did Cordelia go?"

Everyone stared at each other for a moment, and then it was like a giant light bulb went off over their collective heads. Gunn was dumbfounded. "You mean our Cordelia just got zapped back to two years ago?"

At this Fred again said, "Guys, we have a problem..."

"Well what are we going to do? She can't stay there," Angel said.

"Of course not," Wesley said. "But for now all we can do is what we've been doing. Try to find out what demon it was who did this, why he'd want to kill you, and figure out how to reverse this before.....oh." He stopped suddenly, a stunned expression on his face as he finally realized the ramifications. "Oh," he said again.

"That sounds like a bad 'oh'." Gunn remarked warily.

"Don't say 'oh'," Angel commanded.

"I've been so caught up in trying to ascertain the demon's motivation, that it hadn't really occurred to me until this moment that our Cordelia truly is now existing two years in the past." Wesley looked up, grave foreboding on his face. "Her presence there could have disastrous consequences."

"That's what I've been trying to tell you," Fred finally interjected. "There's no way she can totally prevent contaminating the timeline...no matter what she does, not everything will happen the way it did the first time. Even miniscule changes could have huge impacts on our present reality."

Into the ensuing silence, Cordelia hesitantly said, "But...won't I just do everything the same? I mean...if it's me, I...she's done all of it before, right? She knows what to say, and how to act."

"But she won't know why she's there," Wesley replied. "She won't just sit back and settle into a two year old life...she'll have to try to find a way back."

"Which almost certainly would involve telling me and Doyle what happened, so we could help figure it out." Angel said.

"Yes!" Fred said. She was in her element now. Obviously intrigued by the possibility of time travel, she was more animated than any of them had ever seen her before as she went on, "And that could be catastrophic to our timeline! For instance, what if something she does back there starts a chain of events that leads to her never getting stuck in Pylea? You'd have never had to go after her, and I'd still be a slave there, along with every other human she freed, and I wouldn't even be here right now."

Around the room, everyone's faces began to register understanding.

"I freed slaves?" Cordelia asked. Initial surprise melted into a smug, self-satisfied smile. "Go me."

Fred went on. "And it goes beyond that. This Cordelia presents a danger, too." She shook her head. "We've got a total Prime Directive situation here."

This time Fred was the one getting the bewildered looks. "Star Trek," she said, as if it was perfectly obvious. When everyone still looked at her blankly, she looked less certain. "The Next Generation?" When it became apparent that no one had any clue what she was talking about, she explained. "There's this directive… the directive. It mandates that if Starfleet comes in contact with another species of lesser technology and or development, they have a policy of non-interference to avoid influencing the direction in which the species would have naturally evolved on its own. And…well…this isn't exactly the same, because we're all the same species, and it's not really about technology, but..."

"Fred," Wesley gently prodded.

"Right," she said, stopping herself. "The point is, that time is just like that. It's got its own course of evolution, and the past has already happened. Any interference at all will change the course of that evolution, possibly drastically altering things as we know them. Even if we were able to send this Cordelia back right now, she could still contaminate the timeline."

"God! Would you quit using the word 'contaminate'? You make me sound like some kind of infectious disease." Cordelia said.

"You know," Gunn said thoughtfully, "I'm not really seeing the downside, here. I mean look at all the good she could do. We could warn her in advance of some of the bad things that went down, and she could avoid them. Like, that family with the little girl with the eye in the back of her head? She could keep them from getting killed. And Lorne's club…she could keep it from getting trashed at least once or twice. And Angel last year? She could stop that. She could…"

He trailed off as the full realm of possibilities sank in. Seriously, and with sudden hope, he said "She could save Alonna."

Apology written all over her face, Fred replied "But our experiences make us what we are, Charles. Without them, we're not really us anymore. There's no telling what the result could be if your sister had lived. Without having lived through her death, you might never have joined Angel Investigations at all."

"And if it's that, or having my sister alive? No offense or anything, but in a heartbeat." Gunn said.

Wesley was regretful. He knew the pain Gunn still felt at not being able to protect his sister was considerable. Her death and turning hadn't been his fault, but he felt a brother's guilt nonetheless. It hadn't helped matters when he'd been the one who had to stake her himself. The sudden hope that she could now be saved was evident on his friend's face. "Your sister might be saved," Wesley said gently, "but then what of all the people you've helped to save since you joined us? Would you trade all of their lives as well?" Struck by the ramifications, Gunn fell into morose silence.

Fred's voice was soft. "So you see, even one change to the original course of events could end up meaning the loss of lives. It's impossible to determine how wild the effects could be." She gestured toward Cordelia. "She knows us now; she knows our names. What's going to happen when she meets us again, even though it'll be for the first time? It can't happen exactly the same, now. Changes are already inevitable."

Angel looked off to the side, perplexed. "Okay, so now I'm confused, though." he said. "If our Cordelia went back in time to two years ago…and you say it's impossible for her not to have some sort of impact on the timeline there…shouldn't we be seeing the results?" He looked at Wesley, and then at Fred. "If she makes any change whatsoever, it's back there. In our past. Which already happened for us. Shouldn't we have immediately seen any changes the instant she was zapped back?"

They all looked around as if they expected one of the aforementioned "changes" to suddenly materialize out of thin air. Nothing happened, and Fred's features were marred by a thoughtful frown. "There are any number of reasons why we wouldn't be aware of the effects yet," she said. "It's possible, albeit not very likely, that she hasn't done anything differently. Or, the timeline in which she got sent back to has spawned an alternate universe. Or, it could even be a side effect from the gauntlet. Maybe because she's from our time, the effects here will be suspended. There are no documented cases of true time travel, so until we can figure out how the demon did what he did, we can't be exactly certain what the effects are, or how to reverse them.

"In the meantime," Wesley continued, turning toward Cordelia, "it's vitally important that this Cordelia not learn any more of our time than she already has. To minimize the possibility of contact, I think she should be quarantined immediately in one of the rooms upstairs..."

"Again with the disease references," Cordelia sighed.

"...and contact with anyone other than Angel or myself should be kept to bare minimum." With that, Wesley approached Cordelia, who stood up. He started to reach for her arm to lead her to the stairs, but just then Darla shrieked from her room on the second floor.

Everyone looked alarmed, and Angel took off up the stairs. "Uh, maybe her stayin' here isn't such a good idea," Gunn said.

Cordelia looked spooked. "What was that?"

Without missing a stride, Wesley instead took hold of Cordelia's arm and began leading her toward the entrance. "Change in plans," he said. "You'll have to stay at your apartment for the duration." He pulled her toward the door, grabbing his jacket and keys on the way as she looked curiously back over her shoulder at the stairs leading to the second level.

"But what about the ...you know," Fred hinted.

"Can't be helped," Wesley replied, pausing in the doorway. He glanced at Cordelia. "I hope our Cordy knows about the Prime Directive."

"Please," Cordelia said snidely as Wesley dragged her out, "like I've ever watched Geek Trek?"