Part 2

Angel looked up when the door to his new room opened. They'd moved him from ICU a couple of hours before. He'd never been so glad of the money from Wolfram and Hart as he was now. It had not only paid for his operation but it had paid for this comfortable private room. He'd once told Cordelia he'd always be a loner and it was true, he didn't fancy being stuck on a ward with other people; he was far more comfortable on his own. If comfortable as a word he could use to describe himself right now. They'd lowered his main medication slightly and he was suffering from a strange all over ache and combined with the side effects of the morphine (being high as a kite) comfortable was something he wasn't.

Instead of a nurse or another member of hospital staff as he'd expected, the door opened to reveal the faces of Gunn, Faith, Willow and Buffy. He hadn't realised that it was visiting time already.

Gunn quickly wheeled himself over to his friend's side, he'd adapted well to his chair, and now had more mobility that most people would have thought possible. The physio at the hospital had already got him on a wheelchair basketball team, based at a sports centre near his aunt's place. Angel let out an insane giggle as Gunn spun his chair up parallel to the bed.

"Faith was right, you're even more disturbing than Wes was on the Morphine." Gunn laughed.

At the thought of their fallen comrade both men sobered. Well one sobered and one tried to. Faith clipped Gunn around the back on the head as she approached the bed.

"Geeze, great start Charley, lets depress the man in the hospital bed." She groused sarcastically.

"Hey Angel" Willow chirped cheerfully but shyly as she sat on the end of the Bed.

"Willow," Angel nodded back with a smile.

Faith made her way round to the other side of the bed, and sitting in the chair there; she poked at the food left on a tray by Angel's bedside.

"You gonna eat this?" She said studying what was probably scrambled egg with his fork.

"No"

"Cool!" The others watched incredulously as she moved the plate to her lap and started to shovel the contents into her mouth.

"So..." Gunn said, still watching the brunette slayer impersonate a ravenous pig. Finally able to tear his eyes away he looked at the ex vampire, "How you doin, man?"

"Err..." Angel too, was struggling not to stare, "I'm good. The doctor came in earlier, talked me through post op procedure. They lowered my pain meds tho,"

It was then he noticed that Buffy had hung back. He could just see her over Gunn's shoulder, hovering near the door. He wanted to be mad at her, to be able to tell her to get out and leave him the hell alone, but she looked so wistful, like she really wanted to be sat with them. Maybe it was the morphine but he couldn't bare the look on her face.

"Buffy,"

Buffy met his eyes over Gunn's shoulder and offered him a small smile.

"Hey Angel."

"I'm sure if you ask at the desk they could get you a chair from somewhere." He offered.

"Ummm. Yeah" She said, before disappearing out the door.

"OH MAN!!" Every ones attention suddenly snapped to Faith, whose face was screwed up in disgust. She looked slightly green. "Ok, its official, hospital food is definitely worse than Prison food."

He couldn't help it, before he could stop himself, Angel sniggered, and then it grew to an all out giggle. His mirth was infectious and Gunn and Willow soon found themselves joining in, although without the slightly manic quality of the Morphine imbued ex vampire.

"Hey its not funny!" Faith barked indignantly, before covering her mouth with her hand and turning an even deeper shade of green. "Oh, god, I'm gonna spew."

After Buffy returned, the group stayed at Angel's bedside until he fell asleep once again. Content to let their convalescing friend get the rest he needed, they quietly left his room and ventured towards a part of the hospital they knew well, the cafeteria.

As Faith and Gunn took the lead, talking animatedly about various demons and fighting experience, Willow and Buffy followed more sedately in a comfortable silence. Willow cast furtive glances at her best friend from time to time, as they navigated the maze like hallways of the hospital. She appeared to be thinking deeply, not surprising she supposed, considering events of the last few weeks.

"You OK Buffy?" Willow prodded, curious as to what exactly was going on in the blonde slayers head.

"hmmm?"

"Earth to Buffy!"

"What sorry, Will."

"Deep thoughts?"

Buffy stopped and turned to her best friend. Sighing slightly she ran her hands through her hair. "Yes, no..." she pouted for second, then threw her hands up in defeat, "I don't know... At least he talked to me right?"

"You've waited this long Buffy, a little longer won't kill you."

"I know this, believe me. Its just, I know he's hurt and I know he has things on his mind that are WAY more important than me and him, but..."

"You want a chance to set the record straight?"

"Yeah... check me out. self absorbed Buffy, GOD, he's just had heart surgery, I'm sure the last thing he needs is his clingy ex."

"Oh Buffy," Willow pulled her best friend into a hug, the last month had bridged the gaps in their friendship that had been forming for years. More than once since their arrival in Los Angeles, the one of them had mentioned how it was just like senior year all over again. Buffy worrying over her relationship (or non relationship) with Angel, Willow being supportive best friend, Xander Jumping in with inappropriate comments and although he had softened his stance on the ex Vampire, he had said he would never like him. All they were missing was the presence of Oz and Cordelia. Giles was never mentioned; his betrayal had hit them all too hard.

Releasing the blonde, Willow stepped back and offered her a small smile.

"I'm sure that's not how he thinks of you. I mean, if he did, then learning about you and immortal wouldn't've hurt him right? And lets not forget the little fact that he left you like six years ago, he can hardly expect you to stay at home waiting for him. Oh not that you actually went out and looked for the immortal right? Coz that was all thrall. Wasn't it?"

"Yep, I was all thralled Buffy. God that's so Icky, I mean, ok so I sort of knew what I was doing, but it wasn't really me that wanted it you know?" Buffy scrunched her forehead. The topic of the immortal was one she hated, the whole thing made her feel violated. His thrall had been so subtle that nothing they did was exactly against her will; it was just like being a little drunk the whole time. In England she'd heard it called beer goggles, when you found yourself attracted to someone, who whilst sober you would avoid like the plague. At first she had thought the only repercussion of her whole torrid escapade with The Immortal was her bone deep embarrassment, If only that were the case. Now those few weeks were the largest stumbling block between herself and her soulmate. Her soulmate who had stopped believing in her and in their love. "Ok enough grousing, I need coffee."

"Yup coffee is good and Oh maybe one of those little pastry things with raisins?"

"Sounds good to me."

"No way"

"Its true,"

"No dammed way, Wes so did not do that. No way."

"See, you didn't see Wes back then, the man had it goin on!!"

"He killed a Muppet?"

"Dude this was an evil Muppet."

"With a shot gun? Isn't that over kill?"

"I did mention evil right?"

"So let me get this straight. You, Angel, Wes and Fred, stormed the studios of some kids show, and slaughtered the cast, live on air?"

"Pretty much."

Faith just shook her head. She and Gunn had been trying to top each other with the strangest thing they'd ever fought. It was pretty clear that Gunn had won, who could beat evil Muppets?

"Ok, ok. Now I need back story for this, coz you don't just go around beheading felt puppets, that's just weird."

When Willow and Buffy entered the cafeteria, they were instantly alerted to the presence of their friends, when Faith's howl of laughter ricocheted around the room. Quickly moving to their table to investigate, they found a smug looking Gunn and Faith collapsed in heap, chocking her laughed into the tabletop.

"A puppet... A puppet... oh god!!" She gasped around her laughter, "Tell me you got pictures?"

Gunn looked even more smug and grinned. "Yup!"

"You're evil!"

"Ok, someone wonna explain why Faith is having a seizure?" Buffy asked as she reached the table, casting a curious look between the pair.

Gunn decided to answer because Faith looked ready to fall off the table unconscious. "I was just telling Faith about an incident last year."

"That has something to with puppets?" Willow asked confused.

At the mention of the word Puppet; Faith, who had just about got herself calmed down, collapsed again, hiding her head in her hands as tears ran down her cheeks.

In deference to keeping Faith calm, Gunn refrained from telling the other girls the tale of Puppet Angel. Instead the four sat talking about plans for the next few weeks. They had all put their lives on hold since the assassination attempt on Angel and Giles' betrayal. Truth be told, Buffy felt she'd had her life on hold since she got the call from Gunn all those weeks ago. But now they all had time to breathe, and it was time to think about what they were doing.

"Man, I gotta get back to the neighbourhood soon, they gonna think I ran out on them again." Gunn said after swallowing a bite of his tuna salad sub.

The others nodded; they knew that since the fall of Wolfram and Hart, Gunn had gone back to his roots and was working closely with the next generation of street kids fighting the perpetual war for survival in the more down trodden areas of Los Angeles. Stories of the things he'd done had been floating around the neighbourhood for years, so even despite his missing legs they were quite happy to listen to his advice. Most of his original crew had either died or had fallen in other ways. One of the hardest pieces of news he'd had to swallow was that Rondell, his long time right hand man, who he'd last parted company with on such bad terms, had died in a drive by shortly after he'd started at Wolfram and Hart. When Gunn had returned, he'd found his old crew fragmented and crying out for leadership, there were a lot of new faces, many of them the younger siblings to people he'd fought shoulder to shoulder with back in the day. Needing something to make himself feel useful again, where 'that place' had sapped him of all his self worth and purpose, he'd pulled them together. He couldn't fight with them, but he trained them, guided them. Over the last month he'd left them much to their own devices. He'd learnt from past mistakes that walking away for extended periods of time could lead to deep resentments, so he really needed to show his face. His reverie was broken by the voice of one his female companions.

"I was thinking of checking out UCLA," Willow spoke up, idly pushing her salad around her plate with her fork. "With UC Sunnydale at the bottom of big hole and all. How about our two slayers? Any plans?"

"Nope, I was sorta all set to go with training the girls back in England, but now?" Faith shrugged and took a sip of her coke, "No clue."

"Buffy?" Willow prodded.

"Nope, no idea, I guess it wouldn't hurt LA to be home to an active slayer" Buffy caught Faith's eye and the brunette nodded "or two. I think I kinda figured my future was whatever Giles wanted me to do with the council, but now I'm renegade, AGAIN, and to be honest I haven't really thought about it."

"Yeah, I get that, it's been non stop around here for a while." Gunn agreed.

"You know its funny," Buffy said "All those years I was like, 'wouldn't my life be so great if I wasn't the slayer' and now I don't really have to be and I can't give it up."

Gunn raised his coke in agreement and Faith nodded, "Here, here, B."

"I wonder how Angel feels about it..." Willow mused aloud. When the others looked at her she explained. "He's been fighting longer than any of us, makes you wonder if he'll be prepared to give it all up."

"Not seeing it, fighting is all he knows, man nearly went stir crazy with a desk job." Gunn put in. "Makes you wonder tho, man's got his whole life a head of him, what's he gonna do with it?"

When they all decided to head back to Angel's room, Faith insisted they bring something for Angel to eat. She was adamant that nothing human could eat the food in the hospital judging by what she had tried that morning, the only problem none of the could agree on what they should take him. So loaded with subs (Gunn), chips (Faith), fruit (Willow) and cherry pie (Buffy) the foursome started their trek over to Angel's room.

To say Angel was surprised when they arrived laden with gifts of cafeteria food was an understatement. He watched wide-eyed as they bickered their way into the room. He woken up only about 20 minutes beforehand and had been disappointed to find himself alone.

Left alone his thoughts had unwittingly followed a similar track to those of his friends on the other side of the building. Not 5 weeks ago his future had seemed a moot point; he simply didn't have one. Now he did and despite the long list of things he would like to do, the more practical side to his nature pondered over his long-term objectives. As Liam, he had no real plans for his future, as a teenager he had wanted to be an artist, but his father had brutally crushed that dream, calling it an unfit profession for a man to pursue. He'd tried his hand at his father's business, but a lack of interest and not having the requisite head for numbers had quickly left him out of a job and in his father's bad graces once again. In his twenties he had simply given up trying, unable to find a profession that his father would approve of, that he could do. He had to admit his later attempts had been half hearted at best though, already too disheartened to really try.

As Angelus, it hadn't been an issue; evil soulless vampires rarely look for jobs with good career prospects. And anyway wasn't blood sucking fiend an occupation? Being a sire was certainly a full time job.

After the soul, he'd worked involuntarily for the US government those short few weeks back in 1942. In 1996 he had become a full time employee of the PTB, but with his humanity, had come his retirement from their service, whether he wanted to or not. Angel Investigations was probably the closest he had come to a true profession, a job. But Angel Investigations was now just a faded plaque on the doors to the abandoned Hyperion hotel. Wolfram and Hart was a disaster that he would rather forget, he counted it amongst his greatest failures. So where did that leave him?

He wasn't given time to fully brood over the subject, as the arrival of his friends bearing great mountains of food, was a distraction to blatant to ignore. He couldn't help the dippy grin that spread over his features, they'd brought him food, it was so sweet. 'Since when do I find things sweet? Damned morphine.'

"Hey, Big Guy! Check it out, Food!"

"We having a picnic?" Angel asked slightly bemused.

"No, this all for you. See I told these ladies that a man like you, he don't need nothing fancy. Tuna sub, no fuss no muss, in't that right man?" Gunn spoke up.

"Err,"

"No way, see Charley, what Angel needs is feel good food, chips, chocolate and soda." Faith argued back waving a chocolate bar for emphasis. Angel watched the chocolate almost hypnotised, even before all the recent events chocolate was the one thing that could bring the barest hint of smile to his face. He almost whimpered as Faith went to peal off the wrapper, but was distracted when Buffy put her two pence worth into the conversation.

"Would you guys please get over yourselves? Feel good food? Manly food? Please, the best thing when someone isn't feeling well is pie. The ultimate comfort food," then she added with a shrug and an apologetic glance in Angel's direction, "well except for ice cream but they didn't have any."

Angel just stared, he was ravenous, the lunch he'd been served had looked ok but one mouthful had put him off trying to consume any more. He had planned to ask them, when they returned, to get him something from the cafeteria, but now he didn't need to, only they still all had hold of the bounty they'd brought. A light touch on his shoulder pulled his attention away from the delicious looking food being held just out of his reach.

"I brought you this, I don't have some big reason, but HEY, it's healthy." Willow said with a shrug and smile, passing over an apple, a banana and a pear. "We all sort of assumed that whatever you got for lunch would be inedible."

Quickly taking a bite of the apple, he shot Willow a grateful smile and indicated she should take a seat at the side of the bed.

Swallowing a lump of the sweet fruit, he leant a little closer to the redhead and glancing over to the bickering trio spoke quietly.

"What is all this about?"

"They couldn't decide what would be the best thing to get you for lunch." She replied with a laughing smile. Angel just raised an eyebrow incredulously.

Angel didn't get a chance to respond because the room fell into silence at the sound of someone clearing their throat loudly filtered through the room.

The doctor that Faith had seen the night before stood in the doorway to the room, looking at its occupants with barely concealed confusion.

"Everything alright in here Mr Keeley?"

Choking slightly on a chunk of apple as he struggled not to laugh, Angel nodded.

"Well then, there are a couple of things we need to discuss."

The doctor was mildly surprised when Angel asked that the others were present, but seeing no harm in it, continued to outline what Angel was to expect over the course of his recovery.

They'd already agreed that Angel would move in with Faith, Willow, Buffy, Robin and Xander at Buffy's father's house after the operation. Satisfied that Angel would get the care he would need once he'd been released the doctor went over the finer details of postoperative care. Angel would have to return the hospital a week after he was released and continue to do so until they thought it was no longer necessary. As well as the medication for the pain, Angel would have to carry 'just in case' meds at all times and more than likely for the rest of his life. It wouldn't stop him from doing pretty much anything. The doctor even said he was confident that in the very near future he could see no problem in Angel running a marathon should he chose to do so. But in the interim he would have to limit any strain he put on his heart, for the first six months it was recommended he limit himself to light exercise and until he was finished with his weekly appointments he should do even less than that. Buffy had turned bright red when the doctor had told Angel that for the next few weeks he not do anything that would unnecessarily raise his heart rate, including having sex.

With that out of the way, the doctor reassured Angel and the rest of the group that he should be released the day after next, barring no complications. Promising to have some leaflets for Angel before he was released the doctor checked over Angels chart and left.

Angel stared up at the ceiling. In two days he would be out of hospital. In two days he would start the rest of his life, he should be excited. So why was he terrified?

It was time.

In another place, not too far from Angel and the Scoobies, the shadows stirred. After centuries of waiting it was finally time. There was no discernible event, no cataclysmic circumstance that had informed the knowledge. It simply knew, that it was time.

IT needed to rise, and to rise IT had to be fed. It had been many human lifetimes since it had gone on this mission for IT. If IT had a name it didn't know it. All it knew was its duty, its Duty to IT.

The human eye would never know something had changed. But some eyes could see, and they trembled at the sight of the space where it had rested.

It was time.

Juliet Morse hated the dark. Her mother always told her it was silly to be 11 years old and afraid of the dark, but her mother never saw the things that she knew were there, just beyond the shadows.

Clutching her blanket to her chest she watched the shadows, she couldn't seem to find the switch for her bedside lamp, in fact she couldn't find the lamp. She had woken to the pitch black, trouble was she was sure she'd only gone to bed for a midday nap.

There it was again, a shape, moving from one corner of the room to another. No, not a shape, a shadow of shape. A shadow in the shadows, darker than black if that was possible.

Pulling her knees up to her chest, Juliet squeezed her eyes shut, she couldn't call out, her mom got really cross if she woke her up because of shadows. Ad that's all it was, she told herself, just a shadow. Trouble was they'd done shadows in school and she knew you needed light to create shadows. So where was the light?

And surely shadows didn't make noise... right?

"Hello?" No reply came only the skittering sound she'd heard before.

"Jason?" that must be it, her brother playing tricks... Yet still no reply. "Jason you're scaring me, please."

Nothing, just skittering, like hundreds of tiny claws on hardwood flooring. Not that she knew what hundreds of tiny claws on hardwood flooring would sound like, but she could guess, her grandmother had had a cat after all.

The shadow moved again, and something soft like a warm breeze ghosted over the skin on her left arm. Leaping sideways from the touch, she became tangled in her bedding and fell clumsily over the side of her narrow bed. 'Narrow bed?' her one at home was wide, a three quarter size, the envy of all her friends. 'THIS ISN'T MY ROOM!' She opened her mouth to scream...