Disclaimer: I don't own Angel—Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy do.

Author's Note: I'm a little uneasy on how this chapter played out. Oh, well, give them a moment of happiness, I guess, before things start going south again.

-----

The door to the roof opened with a squeak—maybe not as audible as it used to be but still louder to him than it would have been to a normal human.

Human…him.

This was his third day among the living and breathing, and the thought of his humanity still gave him a little thrill.

Cool hands (though they would have been warm to him just a week before) snaked around his middle, clasping over his stomach as Cordelia nuzzled against his back, her face pressing in between his shoulder blades.

"I thought I'd find you up here," she murmured into his back. "Watching the sun rise again."

Angel nodded, even though it hadn't been a question. Early fingers of rosy light had just begun to reach over the lip of the horizon. In another half hour or so, the sun would be up, but he wouldn't have to hide inside. It wouldn't burn him. Well, it would—Cordy had been harping him about sunburns and skin cancer since he'd first started going outside during the day—but the burns wouldn't kill him. He wasn't a creature of shadow and night anymore. "I don't think it'll ever get old."

She made a noncommittal noise deep in her throat. Then, "Did you talk to Illyria?"

"She wasn't interested in talking—took me fifteen minutes to get her to turn her head so she wasn't mumbling into the carpet. Something's wrong with her."

"And she didn't say what?"

He shook his head. "Illyria's never exactly been what I'd called talkative…and then half of what she says doesn't make much sense. This is the same person who conversed with plants, remember?"

"I don't actually, since I wasn't there, but point taken."

"I wish you had been."

She squeezed once and then removed her arms from his waist. "So do I."

"We needed you," Angel told her as she came around and sat down on the very edge of the roof, dangling her legs over the side. He settled beside her.

Cordy looked over at him and smiled. "You needed me. The others needed…other things. Except maybe Connor. Poor kid—what I wouldn't give to have him be a baby again. Little, snuggly baby—he was so cute back then."

Angel stared out at the reddening sky, not really seeing it. "I can't remember. Everything that's happened since then has just sort of overshadowed it."

She reached over and gave his knee a squeeze. "That's a lie, and you know it."

He sighed. "You're right—you're always right."

"Of course."

They were silent for a few minutes, watching the sunrise and enjoying, after so long apart, each other's presence. For a few scant minutes, in the relative quiet of the morning with the city buzzing far below their feet, everything was perfect. Angel sucked in a deep breath, reveling in the feel of air in his lungs—not just as a pretense but as a necessity.

Cordelia spoke first. "Are you ready?"

"For what?"

Her face had grown oddly expressionless as if she were schooling her features to be carefully devoid of emotion. He felt his stomach clench. For the past two days, they'd been neatly dancing around discussion of the future…or even certain aspects of the present, like why he had retained some of his inhuman abilities or what exactly she was—because she certainly wasn't human anymore.

"Are you ready to face whoever comes to wake Spike up? Because you know it's either going to be Drusilla…or Buffy."

Buffy—and he was human now. Angel touched a hand to his own heart and felt it flutter underneath his palm. He was human, so there was no demon cohabitating with a fragilely anchored soul inside him—there was no more curse to keep them apart… This is what he had hoped for; this is part of why he had sought the Shanshu so passionately.

Beside him, Cordy shifted uncomfortably.

What about her, Cordelia Chase? He looked down at morning's traffic below them. Suddenly, all he could think about was the dream they'd induced in order to bring forth Angelus to fight the Beast. Supposedly, that monk had taken him through a series of events climaxing in perfect happiness. "Do you remember when Jasmine tricked us into releasing Angelus?" he asked.

She nodded, making the brunette curls bounce against her back. He wanted to reach over and twine one through his fingers, but touching her now would probably not be wise—she seemed to vulnerable for that (though she was masking it well). She'd probably bite his head off.

"The monk played with my mind—made me experience everything I really wanted, all my deepest desires. I saw Gunn and Wes getting along instead of fighting over Fred. I fought the Beast side-by-side with Connor, and together we won."

"So, no sex?" she asked incredulously.

"Oh, there was sex," Angel assured her, trying to call to mind the image of her moving over him. She'd been wearing pale blue fleece—he remembered that, but the face that smiled down at him in the memory wasn't the face of the possessed her from a year ago, it was the face she wore now—a little older, a little wiser, a lot less evil.

She snorted, drawing a knee up and hugging it to her chest. "I knew you hadn't matured that much. So, defeating the Big Bad, everybody getting along—especially you and your son—and sex with Buffy—Angel's idea of a perfect world." There was a sharpness to her tone that he wondered if she was even aware of.

"It wasn't with Buffy," he said quietly, hiding his smile.

"It wasn't… Really?" Distrust lurked in her eyes as she searched his face for any sign that he was lying.

"Really."

The next thing he knew, he was flat on his back, his head having just bounced off the hard surface of the roof, with Cordy kissing him fiercely. When they came up for air a few minutes later, he reached up and brushed aside a stray curl. The rising sun cast its bright rays across her face, turning her skin to rosy gold. In over three hundred years of life and unlife, it was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen. "I love you."