A/N : Phew. This one took a while to write. I had a lot of conversations that needed to happen, before we could get to the action ... Thus, this has ended up being a pretty long chapter. But I hope you like it.

A really big thank you, once again, to everyone who has posted a review for this story. From the bottom of my heart, thank you. It means a lot to know that you guys are reading (and aparently enjoying) the story. Please continue to let me know what you think ... And without further ado...

It had been another night of turbulent emotions, and for the second night running, Angel sought solace in the hotel garden. His feelings were coming at him so quickly; he didn't actually know how he felt from one moment to the next. After worrying about his son all day, he was finally reunited with him. Now he had to deal with the fact that Cordelia might be brought back to life, combined with the fact that all three of them, Cordy, Connor and Angel himself, were all part of yet another prophecy regarding the end of the world. Angel was surprised he was still relatively sane.

He heard the door behind him open and close, and didn't turn around as Buffy approached him. He did, however, let out a really big sigh.

'Please Buffy. Not now,' Angel said. 'I've got enough going on without you starting in on me about Connor.'

'Hey, I just came out for some fresh air,' she replied with a grin. Angel replied with a disbelieving look. Buffy sighed. 'What? You expect me to come out here and start yelling about how you had a son with your murderous ex, like some kind of brat?' she flashed him a knowing smile, remembering the last time he called her that. 'I could do that. We both know I've had a lot of practice at it.'

Angel rewarded her efforts with a small smile. 'So, you're actually just out here for fresh air?'

'God, no. This is LA. There is no fresh air here,' she told him. 'I'm here to see if you're okay. After Will's little bombshell.'

'Honestly?' Angel looked sideways at her. 'I don't know. Do I wish that Cordelia had never died? Of course I do. But bringing her back…'

'Questionable moral ground,' Buffy suggested.

Angel nodded. 'Willow brought you back, and you weren't exactly happy about it.'

'True,' Buffy acknowledged. 'But I was pulled out of heaven. It was my time, and…' Buffy trailed off. She had long accepted that she had been brought back for a reason, and she was grateful that she had been given a second chance to be with her friends and watch her sister grow into a woman. But, every now and then, she felt a pang of loss for the eternal rest that had been hers briefly. 'But this is different, Angel. It wasn't Cordelia's time. If it were, she wouldn't be in that prophecy.'

Angel thought about that for a moment. 'She appeared to me. When I was in hell,' he told her. 'She's the reason I escaped. She told me she needed me to fight, to come back to the real world. Not just for myself and Connor, but for her as well. And she said that the Powers were trying to fix the mess they allowed to happen… You know, with Jasmine.'

'Maybe she already knows,' Buffy said. 'About the prophecy…'

Angel didn't reply, but she could tell he had been thinking the same thing himself. Sensing he needed to be alone with his thoughts, Buffy went back inside.

Angel tried to sort through his turbulent emotions, but memories of the past kept interrupting. He tried to push away the negative and remember only the happy times. There had been some, a lot in fact, amid all the blood and the demons and the fighting. And there was a time when Angel had hoped there would be a lot more happy memories, which he and Cordy would make together. The thought of seeing her again … Maybe he was being selfish, he thought, but he wanted nothing more than to see her again.

Slowly, Angel came to his decision. He'd do what he always did – deal. And, if what Buffy said was right, maybe Cordelia had planned to come back all along. Decision made, he got up from the bench and walked with purpose to a corner of the garden. He knew the spot by heart. Dropping down to his knees, he started to dig.

Dawn sat on the steps leading down to the basement, trying to concentrate on an ancient Sumerian text, but something was distracting her. She was distracted to the point that, when Xander came down the stairs behind her and put his hand on her shoulder, she jumped out of her skin.

'Xander!'

'Hey, relax Dawny,' he said with a grin, sitting down beside her. 'Why so jumpy?'

'Jumpy? I'm not jumpy,' she told him, her eyes going back guiltily to her book, to the same line she had been trying to read for half an hour now.

'Oh, I see…' Xander said quietly, looking past her towards the basement's workout room, where Connor was practicing with one of Angel's swords. 'Does someone have a crush on Angel's son?' he teased.

Dawn blushed instantly, but tried to cover. 'I don't know. Do you?'

That shut Xander right up.

'So, what do the ancient Sumerians have to say for themselves?' he asked, deciding it might be safer to change the subject.

Since the destruction of Sunnydale, and even before, Giles had taken it upon himself to train Dawn in the skills and knowledge of the Watchers. With the original Watcher's Council destroyed, and so many Watchers around the world murdered, there had been a danger that the knowledge of the Council would be lost.

However, with so many Slayers now in existence, thanks to Willow's spell, that knowledge was more important than ever. Giles decided, with Buffy, Faith and several other of the slayers' agreement, to begin a new Council, one that worked with the Slayers, gathered knowledge for them, helped them improve their skills, but did not seek to control them, as the old Council had. He had recruited Dawn and Andrew as Watchers-in-training, and now their numbers had swollen to a little over twenty, made up so far mostly of Watcher's who had survived Caleb's culling.

Dawn had been his rising star, learning to read ancient Sumerian, Latin, Greek and even a few demon languages, as well as being trained to fight. She planned to eventually go to university to study Ancient History and Classical Languages, if she could ever find the time between apocalypses.

Willow and Giles both looked up from their books as Angel walking into the office. He looked sober, but much less shocked and upset than their last glimpse of the vampire.

'Hey Angel,' Willow greeted him quietly.

Silently, he walked up to the desk she was working at and gently sat an urn on top of it. Willow could see from the clay that still covered it, that it had recently been in the ground. However, as far she could tell, it looked fairly new. Only months old in fact.

Willow couldn't speak, but Giles saved her the trouble. 'Is that… what I think it is?' the Englishman stammered.

'Cordy's ashes,' Angel confirmed. 'I buried them… her, here. She loved this place. I… figured you might need them. For your spell.'

Willow stood and moved a step towards him. 'Are you… okay with this?'

'I…' Angel hesitated. He wanted to be okay with this. He wanted nothing more in the world than to have Cordelia back at his side. But, if doing this harmed her… if she was happy where she was… 'Are you sure? About the prophecy?'

'I've treble checked the reference,' Giles answered him. 'I can see no way in which the translation could be erroneous. But, Angel… if you're not sure…'

'If it wasn't her time… if she's still meant to be here… then bring her back,' he told them.

When he returned to the lobby, he saw that Buffy was sitting on the couch, keeping a discreet distance, but letting him know she was there for him when he needed her. He was about to join her sitting on the couch when he noticed Anne descending the stairs.

'Hey,' she greeted Angel. 'Thank you for the safe haven.'

'Are the kids alright?' he wanted to know.

'Pretty shaken up, but they'll be fine.' Anne noticed the blonde woman sitting on the couch and a flash of recognition passed over her face. 'Buffy?'

Buffy looked at the woman for a moment, unsure of where she knew her from. Then it hit her. 'Lily?'

'Yes. Well, it's Anne now, remember?'

'How could I forget?' Buffy smiled. 'God, it's been what… 6 years? And you're working with kids now?'

'That's right. I set up a shelter for teens. 5 years ago now.'

Angel had been watching this exchange back and forth, looking totally confused. 'You two know each other, I take it?'

'We met here in LA, when I ran away from home. The summer you…'

'Oh,' Angel didn't need her to finish that sentence. The summer he went to hell – the first time.

'Buffy actually let me have the name she was using when she was here,' Anne told him. 'Before that I was Lily.'

'And what was it before that… Chartreuse?' Buffy tried to remember.

'Chantarelle,' Anne replied with a grin. 'During my incredibly stupid faze of following that vampire cult…'

The realization suddenly hit Angel. 'I knew I recognized you when we first met!' he exclaimed. 'You were in that bunker in Sunnydale.'

'Yeah, and you were rude and confrontation,' Anne told him with a smile. 'Come to think of it, you weren't any different when we first met here, too.'

'He's like that sometimes,' Buffy remarked, grinning in Angel's direction. 'I think it's all the brooding – makes him short-tempered.'

Buffy rejoined her friends in the office, having satisfied herself that Angel was in relatively good shape, considering. As ever, Giles and Willow were busy little beavers, bent over their respective books – Giles' being research on the upcoming battle, Willow's being the spell to resurrect Cordelia.

'So. How are we doing?' she asked them.

Giles looked up from the scroll he had been poring over. 'Both Andrew and Kennedy have reported back. First waves of Slayers will be here tomorrow night. It will be the following day for the rest.'

'Hopefully they'll be in time for the party,' Buffy said, taking a seat. 'What's the ETA on that, by the way?'

'I wish I knew, Buffy,' Giles replied, taking off his glasses and rubbing his tired eyes. 'But the texts are not that specific. The one reference I can find reads…' He put his glassed back on and read from his notes. 'The time of battle will be made known.'

'Geez. Care to vague that up for me?' Buffy shook her head. 'Will? What you got?'

'A very difficult spell and elephants in my tummy.'

Buffy rolled her eyes. 'When are you going to just accept that there isn't a spell alive that you can't work… well, not alive, but, you know what I mean … Anyway, you can do it. Right?'

Willow grinned. 'You betcha.'

'You might want to hold back on the optimism there, Will,' Xander told her as he and Dawn entered the office. 'We might have some bad news.'

'Worse than an impending apocalypse?' Giles asked.

Dawn put down the large book she had been reading on the desk in front of Giles. 'If I'm reading this correctly, it says that the upcoming showdown is going to be the big one… Or, a big one… you know what we're like with apocalypses. It describes a battle between the forces of light and dark, in the year following the destruction of the Hellmouth and taking place almost immediately after the breaking of the 'Dark Circle'.'

'The Circle of the Black Thorn?' Giles asked.

'It actually says in there that the Hellmouth would be destroyed?' Buffy asked. 'Wish we had read that a little over a year ago. We wouldn't have been so worried…'

'It also says that the forces of darkness plan on bring hell back to earth,' Dawn told them. Leaning over the book and turning a page, she started to read. 'And in that time, the Wolf, the Ram and the Hart will seek to regain the paradise they once had on earth. And only the three, pitted against the three, will restore the balance.'

'And, by paradise, I'm thinking they don't mean a Starbucks on every corner, and streets paved with chocolaty goodness,' Xander remarked.

The heft of the steel felt good in his hand. Natural. Connor found it strange, as he swung the sword round, that he remembered training with this very weapon, and others like it, but it was a memory that resembled a dream more than the recalling of actual events. He remembered everything from his former life, at the same time as possessing memories as far back as early childhood from his new life. And, although he knew that the memories from the happy life he now lived were manufactured, they helped him reconcile the pain and confusion he remembered from before.

He swung the blade again, and was startled when it clashed against steel. Angel stood, grinning, armed with another sword.

'You remember your training?' he asked.

Connor nodded, and matched Angel's grin with one of his own. 'You ready to get your butt kicked?'

'Bring it on, Junior.'

Their sparring was fast and furious, and Angel was impressed with the level of Connor's skill, considering the kid had been living the life of a 'normal' teenager for the best part of a year. He even noticed a couple of moves that he himself had taught him, more than two years ago.

After a vigorous sword fight, Connor broke off and picked up a bottle of water, taking a long drink. Angel noticed the look on his face had changed. Connor looked like he had something on his mind.

'What's up?' Angel asked.

'It's nothing…' Connor started to say, but Angel's disbelieving look stopped him. 'I just… it's Cordelia.'

'Oh,' Angel replied, not really surprised. He sat down on a nearby stool and looked at Connor. 'Okay. Talk to me.'

Connor hesitated, the situation awkward and embarrassing. 'It's just… I remember what happened. Last time I saw her…'

'That wasn't her, Connor,' Angel told him. 'It was something wearing her body…'

'I know, but I thought it was her,' Connor insisted. 'She was practically my mother when I was a baby, and I knew how you felt about her, and I still…'

'That's all in the past now,' Angel cut him off. 'None of it matters.'

'How are you able to forgive me?'

'Because you're my son,' Angel told him. 'And because, everything that happened to you… none of it was your fault. You made some bad choices, but they were because of all those really horrible things that you never should have had to go through…'

'Is that why you erased my memory?' Connor asked, emotion bright in his eyes. 'Gave me a happy family and a normal life?'

Angel didn't speak for a moment. Emotion was building painfully in his chest. Clearing his throat, he looked back at his son. 'I wanted you to have the stability that I never got the chance to give you. I would have given anything to have raised you, given you all the love you deserved. You know that, right?'

Unable to speak, Connor nodded.

'I had to settle for the next best thing,' Angel went on. 'And it's worked, right? You feel more settled? Even though you remember everything… from before?'

'I'm not… as angry anymore,' Connor told him. 'I feel more… at peace? Does that make sense?'

Angel nodded. 'I just wish that I had been the one to give that to you,' he said sadly.

Connor looked at his father and smiled. 'You did.'

Most of the core group were assembled – Angel, Buffy, Giles, Xander, Dawn, Connor and Willow. Faith and around twenty of the slayers had stationed themselves around the perimeter of the hotel, incase any demons decided to pick this moment to attack. Willow and Giles were both worried that the Senior Partners would somehow find out what they were planning and try to stop them.

Willow, with Dawn's help, had prepared a sacred circle, with crystals and sand. Everyone now stood holding candles, evenly spaced around the outside of the circle, with the flame-haired witch in its centre.

Dawn had been going around the outside of the circle with incense, blessing it. Finishing her task, she retrieved her own candle and took up position. Willow smiled a thank you at the younger of the Summers women, and picked up a silver Ankh on a chain, which she placed around her neck.

'Symbol of Isis, bless and protect me in the magic I work this night,' she intoned. Then, raising her eyes heavenward, she began:

'I am one with the universe.

I am nothing and I am everything.

I am the stars and the moon

The seas and the storms

The breath of life

The living and the dead.

I call thee down, O my Goddess

To enter my body

And commune with my spirit.

Be with me now as I fulfill my destiny

And work magic

In accordance with your will.

So mote it be!'

A small cauldron rested on the floor in front of the witch. Slowly, she crumbled several herbs into it, chanting softly, which caused blue smoke to rise. Setting her herbs aside, she picked up the urn containing Cordelia's ashes and held it aloft.

'Isis, giver of life, fill me with your power.

I beg of you, do not ignore my supplication!

I implore of you, use your magic to bring the dead to life!

Taken too soon, the messenger of the Powers is needed to fulfill the trinity of good.

Bring her from the ghostly plane to earth!

Haud diutius mortuus , tamen prognatus iterum.

Restituo viator animus ut suus terrenus somes.

(No longer dead, but reborn.

Restore the messenger to her earthly body.)'

Removing the lid from the urn, she poured the contents into the cauldron. The blue smoke turned white, and became thicker. The air around the circle began to glow faintly. Everyone around the circle could feel the magic flowing around them.

Willow could feel the Power coursing through her. The last time she had experienced anything this powerful had been when she cast the spell to make all the potentials fully fledged slayers. Her breath began to catch in her chest, the rush of the magic speeding up her heart-rate.

'I command you Spirits!

Release her soul to the earthly plane!

Accept my sacrifice,

Seal this magic with my blood!'

Willow grasped a long needle and pricked her finger. Holding her hand over the cauldron, she allowed several drops of her blood to fall into it.

The rush of magic was like an explosion. The air of the lobby crackled and glowed with bright white light and a high wind began, emanating from inside the cauldron itself. The wind whipped at Willow, whose hair had turned the same bright white as the light that filled the room. Gasping for breath, practically hyperventilating from the power she was wielding, she positively glowed.

'So mote it be!' she screamed above the noise of the wind.

As suddenly as it had started, the wind and the light were sucked back into the cauldron at high speed, before the whole thing seemed to implode. Willow was flung from the circle and landed a few feet outside it. The bright ball of light that now filled the circle blinded them all for a moment.

Slowly, the light began to fade, and Angel could make out the silhouette of a woman standing in its place. When the last of the light faded, the beautiful brunette stood and smoothed out her pure white dress.

Cordelia smiled. 'Hi guys.'

To Be Continued...

A/N: Part of the invocation that Willow uses (the one that begins 'I am on with the universe' is an adaption of a couple of actual Wiccan prayers.) Coming up next chapter: The fighting begins, the slayers begin to arrive and Cordy and Buffy face off.