Ok, well I hope that you haven't forgotten this fic because I am still working on it! I promise that there is more to come... eventually! Thanks for all the reviews - please keep em comin cos I really wanna know what you think x

Chapter 4

"What the hell is he doing here!"

Xander flew across the room and landed a swift punch to Spike's jaw before anyone could stop him. The Scoobies froze, they knew why he was doing it and were torn between stopping him and cheering him on. The others were very confused. Angel didn't think and hauled the irate youth off Spike, holding him at bay whilst Spike gathered his wits.

"Xander calm down!"

"Oh, you won't be pulling me away from him in a minute Deadboy, not when you find out that he has been fucking Buffy for the past few months."

Spike paled. Giles had a look of intense hate on his face; it was a pure Ripper look. He didn't dare to turn around to see what expression Angel was wearing. Giles couldn't contain his rage at the vampire and hit Spike hard. Buffy pulled Dawn away from the scene and watched in horror as her watcher beat the prone vampire. Willow and Tara yelled at him to stop and the LA gang were not sure what to do. Giles only got two brutal punches in before he was ripped away from Spike and thrown into the wall by a furious Angel.

"The next person to speak or to attack Spike will have to deal with me! I am totally serious on this point."

Angel moved towards Spike and offered him his hand. Spike was looking at him like he had lost his mind and kept flicking his gaze towards the hand as if he expected a stake to appear in it at any second. When it failed to materialise he grasped Angel's hand and was pulled to his feet.

"You ok?"

The silence that followed Angel's query was tangible; it had an oppressive weight that Angel could feel settling on his shoulders. He had seen the looks that Xander's comment had created from everyone in the room and had the horrible feeling that he was the only standing between Spike and a stake. Feelings of protective obsession and rage started to flow through him and he decided that Buffy wasn't going to be the victim. He cared but there was no love for her any more, not after everything that he had gone through. He remembered everything that Spike had told him on the way back from Rome about what she did to him, breaking his face and bones and using him shamelessly. That wasn't the girl he had loved. Spike may have been able to forgive her but he couldn't, not now. Putting himself between Spike and the rest he turned a steely gaze on Buffy.

"I know. I know everything that has happened here. I know that you beat him one night until his face broke and there wasn't an inch of him that wasn't covered in bruises. I know that you rode him like a prize stallion just because you wanted to feel something."

He saw her horrified look as she collapsed into her chair and he felt Spike tense up in shock. He saw the disbelief on everyone else's face and realised that Spike had never been a part of the group. For all of his blustering about not going to Rome because he couldn't top an exit like that and that he was needed in LA, Angel had never even considered the possibility that Spike was afraid to try to return to them. He knew that he wouldn't have if things had been different after Hell. He turned on Xander and Giles.

"Don't either of you try to make Buffy the victim here because she really isn't. She has never been a victim in her life and I doubt that Spike could turn her into one if I couldn't. If anyone deserves your punches and harsh words it's not Spike and if either of you try anything you will have to go through me."

Another silence settled on the shop as everyone took in this new Angel. They had all assumed that Spike would be dust in the wind as soon as Xander had finished speaking but Angel was guarding Spike from everything. The Scoobies only remembered the Angel that had worshiped Buffy and couldn't understand his view on the situation. They didn't even begin to try to fathom how much of it was true – the stunned expressions on the faces of Buffy and Spike told the whole tale. The LA gang were just as mystified. The last they had heard Spike was still Angel's enemy, one that was dust if he ever set foot in LA. Connor on the other hand was enraged. He couldn't believe that his father was protecting the vampire – granted he knew nothing of their relationship but everything in him screamed at the injustice of it. He was desperately trying to ignore the nagging little voice that was telling him that he was jealous.

"He's a vampire." The sneer in Connor's voice was a flashing neon light but Angel had no time to pander to his son.

"Yes he is."

"Does he have a soul?" The contempt that he heard in Connor's voice broke his heart. The Connor that he had left in LA was his friend, a son that was proud of his father and grateful for everything that Angel had done for him. It hurt him so much to remember that that boy didn't exist; may never exist.

"No."

"Then we should kill him."

Spike felt sick. He was terrified that no one would stop this boy from doing just that and his head was spinning with confusion that Angel was the one defending him. He daren't trust that the protection being offered by the dark demon, his friend so long ago, was real. Angel was as dangerous as Angelus – perhaps more so.

"That's really not going to happen. Not now, not ever. Don't even think that you'll get try to get past me because if I don't stop you, Spike will and he might just kill you."

"Wrong Deadboy – he can't hurt anything human remember? The chip?"

The cold, cruel smile on Xander's face was reflected in Connor's. The boy stalked forward, pulling a stake as he went. Angel refused to move, the only reaction he had to the whole encounter was to laugh.

Everyone looked at the souled vampire as if he had lost something rather valuable – like his sanity. But Angel ignored the looks and pinned Connor with a bemused expression. He searched those blue eyes looking for something but all he found was a serious and murderous expression. He laid a firm hand on Connor's wrist and Connor found out how wrong his earlier assumption had been. Angel wasn't as weak as a kitten, he was very strong. Stronger than before and his grip was like ice.

"Do you seriously think that you're human Connor? Look at your parents… Do you honestly think that someone with the parentage you have could be entirely human?"

Connor reeled away from Angel like he'd been burnt. He had honestly always believed that demons were evil and that he was a human. Humans like him deserved to live and demons to die… now his entire world had been really spun on its head. He had been shocked by the different Angel earlier and that he hadn't been hurt by him and now he was realising the horrid truth of the fact that there was no way that he could be human.

Angel turned to Spike, ignoring the shocked looks that his team were giving him over this stunning revelation.

"Who does that glare remind you of?"

Still scared by Angel's defence of him and the fear that at any moment it might be removed actually found himself studying the boy that smelled human but apparently wasn't.

"Uhhh… I'd say the Ice Bitch but…" Spike took a deep breath and recoiled from the boy growling. "You fucked Darla!"

"Spike meet Connor… he's either you nephew, uncle or great uncle… Our family tree is screwed up."

Everyone was looking in shock at the boy that was the apparent son of two vampires. As one, the Watchers began to clean their glasses and muttered a 'Good Lord' or two. Xander was doing a remarkable impression of a fish, Buffy was pale with shock, Willow was wide eyed, Tara and Dawn were trying to comfort Buffy and Willow and Anya was counting the money… again.

"Connor is my son. I slept with Darla. He was raised in a hell dimension called the Quor'toth by my mortal enemy and went from being 4 months to 17 in a matter of weeks. He hates me and anything demonic and thinks that he knows everything. He's as strong, fast and has the same senses as a vampire. Also, apart from humans, anything is fair game to Connor and he hates magic… so Xander is safe at least. Connor, this is Spike and let me tell you this now – I need him in this war more than I need you. Try to hurt him or take him out of the game and you will meet the Angelus that saw Will as his best friend. Got it?"

Connor nodded, not at all sure that he wanted to meet Angelus at all despite all of his bravado. No one else responded and for a while everything in the shop was silent. Until Spike began to howl with laughter and wrapped an arm around Angel.

"It's good to see you again Peaches!"

Angel smirked at the cackling vampire and couldn't help but wish that this had been their reunion before in Sunnydale or in LA last year. He vowed that it was going to be different this time. He had learnt a lot from the souled Spike. He'd learnt that having a soul didn't mean not being a vampire, it meant having a conscious and as long as he didn't kill he didn't have to worry. He'd need that edge this time around; he needed to be Angelus again. At least Angelus was making life easy for him this time. Angelus was quite happy to have Spike in his life and was purring contentedly in Angel's inner ear at the show that Angel was making of defending him.

No one else looked quite as content with the new goings on and although they were all sure that Angel wasn't soulless, they knew that he wasn't the same. Something huge had changed inside of him and they could all feel that it made him slightly hostile to them.

"Well now that we're all here… perhaps you could tell us what is going on? Hmm?" Giles was still cleaning his glasses when he proposed his question. He was met with murmurs of approval and everyone went and settled down on any available surface. Spike stayed close to Angel, for both his protection and because he sensed that Angel needed some support in what ever he had to say. Connor moved himself as afar away as possible form everyone and the LA gang stayed together physically, but emotionally there were huge distances between them.

Angel ran a hand through his hair and took a shuddering breath. He'd never been so nervous in his entire existence. A sweet smile from Fred spurred him on as he owed it to her to tell the truth more than he owed it to anyone.

"God, where the hell do I start? The story sounds crazy to me and I know that it's real." Angel paused. He'd rehearsed what he was going to say a thousand times over ever since he had heard what Whistler had had to say but the words still wouldn't come. The tale was ridiculous and yet it was so true that it was the only thing that he was sure of. Everything else could be a dream, but what he had to say? That was reality.

"I'm going to be brutally honest. You won't like what I have to say, hell I doubt that you'll believe what I have to say but I can offer you proof. Please don't interrupt; I can hardly bear to say this as it is, and I've been playing it over in my head for the past twenty four hours. Well I'll start at the end. Two nights ago I was two years in the future. I wasn't stuck at the bottom of the Pacific. I was in an alley watching it rain demons. It was the End of Days. In two years time the apocalypse will be here. The real thing, the real apocalypse, the big one. It has been coming for a thousand years and in two years it'll be here. And we lose. The good guys actually lost. Hard to believe really. We work so hard, sacrifice so much and it isn't good enough."

"If that's the case vampire, then how are you here? I doubt that in the middle of the Apocalypse there was time for a practitioner to send you back through time."

"Well if you'd stop being so condescending and actually listen to what I have to say, Roger, you might get the answers that you seek. I thought that watchers were meant to have patience. I get that being a watcher you are used to knowing everything, but pull up a pew because I'm about to start teaching."

Wesley smiled inwardly as his father met the razor sharp edge of Angel's tongue. It was strange watching a man of sixty, with distinguished features and silver hair being spoken down to by a figure that looked less than half his age but was in reality four times it.

"Anyone else with the questions or can I get the story out before the End of Days hits? Ok then. To answer Mr Wyndham Price's question I was blasted back through time accidentally on purpose so to speak. I was fighting alongside three friends, one of which was a powerful demon. Illyria. There's no point reaching for your books, you won't find her in there. She's an Old One, a demon god, she came before humans and demons and everything. She was a shaper of worlds or so she delighted in telling me. She was powerful; she told me that at one point Glory bowed to her and in her world, the Wolf, Ram and Hart were no more than mere vampires. Eventually, though, despite the speeches and the hostility, she fought on our side. Actually it was Illyria who convinced me to do what the Powers wanted. She said that to be a king and to win a war you have to serve no master but your own ambition. Somehow she became my greatest weapon against Wolfram and Hart, just because of her opinion of me."

"How is it that you came to be fighting alongside something that Glory worshipped? We met Glory and this Illyria could only have been, well the world almighty springs to mind." Giles did not like the way this conversation was going. None of the Scoobies did. Dawn moved closer to Buffy, all the while checking that Spike was near at hand. Willow and Tara looked ready to cast at any second and Xander and Anya seemed to reach a truce. Even the Watcher's representatives looked worried; after all they had been involved with the Glory debacle.

"Illyria… Illyria infected and killed a member of my team. It wasn't Illyria's fault; in fact she was no more responsible than the common cold. Someone else set it up. Her sarcophagus was removed from its resting place and sent to us. We couldn't stop the infection without killing everyone between LA and the Cotswolds. Theoretically, the host's soul was destroyed, creating enough energy to complete the take over of the body, but it seemed as though the soul was mixed with the demon in parts. Illyria had feelings about us that came from the shell, the host. It worked both ways, we couldn't kill her because of how we saw her and she couldn't kill us because of what she remembered. Eventually, those remaining feelings and willingness to do good meant that she stood shoulder to shoulder with us. The promise of a lot of violence didn't hurt matters; she was always up for a fight.

"Who was it?"

The question came from the one person that Angel really didn't want to talk to about this. Innocent brown eyes looked at him with such trust that the tears welled in his eyes. He moved to crouch in front of her and took her face in his hands.

"We did everything that we could Fred, but I wasn't your handsome man this time. You were so brave and it totally destroyed us…"

He didn't have to say anything else; they all saw what he was trying to say. He decided to take the time that he had with her and pulled her into a hug before giving her a gentle kiss. "I haven't seen your smile in almost six months. I missed you more than you will ever know. And I will die before I let it happen again."

There was a look in Angel's eyes that told them all, that he was deadly serious on this point. He wasn't about to lose any of his team again. Holding her for a little while longer he eventually let go and returned to his previous spot.

"Ok, that's not going to happen so we'll have to get on with the tale to stop it from happening. One of Illyria's many powers was time manipulation. Because of everything that had come before the Powers were cut off from this plane. They couldn't contact or help us in any way. They used their last vestiges of magic to send me here. They used Illyria's death and subsequent supernova of power to blast me back through time to stop everything that allows the apocalypse to come. So here's where we get down to the nasty stuff. Do you want to know what's coming and what you did before or do you want me to let you know as it comes?"

"I think that we want everything Angel. All of it. I can't fight if I don't know what's coming. So spill." Buffy was looking at Angel as though she were the one running the show. He wasn't sure that the smug look would remain after she heard that she was one of the causes.

"Does everyone agree?" He looked around and saw that everyone was agreeing with her. "Ok then. Over the next year the entire line of slayers is going to come under attack and be virtually wiped out. The Watcher's Council will be destroyed; hundreds of girls will lose their lives or flee to Sunnydale. The cause? Willow. When you brought back Buffy, The First Evil got a real foothold in this world. When Slayers were first created by the Shadow Men, the first watchers, it was a shadow of the First Evil that was put into them. The shadow demon was the only corporeal form that the First has in this dimension. When the Shadow Men put it into the Slayer they cut him off from this world. Without that he isn't able to affect this reality although he can do a lot of damage in his incorporeal form. That is why no slayer should ever be resurrected. Bringing a Slayer back means that the shadow comes with them and a gateway is opened for him to come through. He gains too much power that way, and he decides to use it to wipe out the entire Slayer line. Once that happens, his shadow would be free and he would walk the earth again. He does a good job, he almost succeeds."

He saw the looks of horror of on the faces of the Scoobies. Only Spike seemed unsurprised, but then Angel had learnt that he was a lot more astute than anyone ever gave him credit for. He really didn't want to have to nurse their broken feelings at the moment but knew that he had to offer some words of comfort.

"Look, it's done now and had there been enough power I may have been sent back further. I doubt that anyone here regrets that Buffy is alive. But there is always a consequence to magic, you know that. Now we have to deal with the fall out. The First sends everything he has at you, including the first race of vampires, the Turok'Han. At the same time we have our own not so small apocalypse to deal with in LA. It involved a rain of fire, demon made of molten rock, Angelus, oh and Cordelia being possessed by a higher being that wanted to rule the world. All a huge mess that makes us look like total fools. We both took care of our respective problems but each solution came with a consequence. Ours is perhaps the hardest to understand so I will explain it last. It is also the least important as if we change the future here, then ours will be very different. Yours, well, you guys in a moment of equally sheer genius and stupidity decide to activate all of the potential slayers in the world. Thousands of girls with the power to fight the good fight. Wanna know why it's so stupid? Because of the power that it takes to do a spell like that.

You don't use your own power, Willow; you tap into the Powers that Be. You drain them and cut them off from here. From that point on we were fighting blind. They had to… they had kill Cordelia to get a message to me; the power of her sacrifice was enough to get through to me. What I am saying is that you can't do that again. Without the Powers being able to help us here, the Apocalypse becomes inevitable and there one chance at getting back on track isn't enough.

The consequence of our actions, well that was slightly more fun." He looked at his gang and gave them a little grin. "What would shock you guys the most?"

"You, turning the hotel into the next Caritas?" Lorne couldn't help the hopeful tinge that his voice took.

"We move to Vegas?"

"No Charles, don't be silly, it's obvious. We start to work for Wolfram and Hart as an outside contract." Fred laughed at her own joke. She knew that Angel wouldn't let her die and she had to live for the now.

"Of course, we're… My God! We do!" Wes and the others turned horrified faces to their boss.

"Not quite. I become CEO and you become Chiefs of Staff of the LA branch of Wolfram and Hart. They give us the offer of a lifetime and we take it. What we get is a turn-key, state-of-the-art, multitasking operation. We get the building, assets, personnel, letterhead, paperclips, all of it. It's ours to do with as we see fit. We get access to all of their resources. More importantly – I get twelve cars and a luxury penthouse plus we each have a six figure salary plus bonuses. It was fun." He had to laugh at the looks that he was receiving. "Actually, that is what everyone thought we had gone for. Truth be told, we went to try to fight evil from the inside and we succeed. The last thing that we do as a team is destroy their agents of the Apocalypse, but we couldn't stop the actual thing. We go there to help people. In return, they try to find a cure for Cordy and they give Conner a new life. They have a powerful sorcerer called Cyvus Vial build you a whole new life, remove all your bad memories and give you new ones. Ones without demons and without Quor'toth; you're a happy, well adjusted nineteen year old. You have a family that you love and that love you. You're at Stanford and you enjoy life. You get the life that I could never give you. On top of that we get the information that you use to defeat the First and close the Hellmouth for good. Bye bye Sunnydale

So very long story short, that's how we find ourselves in such a mess. We have to stop it all, mainly though, we have to stop getting cut off from the Powers."

"I don't understand, how is making a race of slayers a bad thing? I'd have thought that it would be a good thing, I mean Buffster here can have a holiday."

"It's about entropy."

"Go on Spike. Never let it be said that William the Bloody is an idiot. I'll sit back and let you take the reins." Angel threw a real smile at Spike, the type that Spike hadn't seen in over a hundred years. He desperately tried to ignore the warm coil that settled in his stomach. Something had changed between Angel and himself in the future. He could get used to having Angel back on his team, especially if Buffy wasn't playing.

"Balance. There always has to be a balance between good and evil. If the scales tip in the favour of good then they have to tip in the favour of evil for balance to be restored. The more good there is, the more evil; because there always has to be balance." A stunned silence followed Spike's little speech.

"Wot?" He looked around. He hated showing his smarts. Angel couldn't help but laugh. Connor watched the pair through green eyes.

"That's my boy."

"Your boy? I thought that Dru made him?" Buffy looked between the two grinning vampires.

"Shall we leave that little mystery to them boyo?"

"Why not Peaches?"

"Speaking of entropy, however, there is one thing that we need to sort now. You see coming here tonight; I've already changed history or the future. One of them we don't want to happen, the other… well that's your decision…" He pinned Spike with a look