Disclaimer: I don't own Angel or Buffy: The Vampire Slayer. They belong to Joss Whedon, who is a genius.

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"I'm not hearing dialing."

Angel scowled at the closed office door. "I've already called Giles!" Which was true. And woken the Watcher up at some ungodly hour of the morning. Time zones always gave him a headache.

It had taken quite a bit of convincing before Giles would give him the phone number to Buffy's current residence in Rome. The old man still didn't trust him. Not that Angel really blamed him—he had, after all, sold out to Wolfram & Hart. That's what it had been, selling out. And despite him selling his soul, bargaining with the very devil himself, Cordy had still died and Connor had apparently been only temporarily patched. Not truly healed.

Connor's time in Quortoth had left a shadow on his soul. Vail's spell had lifted it for a while, but it was back now. All that unnecessary pain—Angel could see it in his son's eyes when the boy looked at him.

His hand tightened unconsciously around the phone, and the plastic creaked in protest.

But now he had to call Buffy Summers. No more stalling. He'd wake her up, of course, which would make her oh-so pleasant to deal with, but he couldn't put this off any longer.

He heard Cordelia move away from the door as he started to dial. Even the sound of her footsteps made him smile—she'd lurk to give him a kick in the pants to make the call, but she wasn't going to eavesdrop. At least not so obviously.

The phone was picked up on the fourth ring, and a sleepy voice mumbled, "Hello?" on the other end.

His stomach had decided to twist itself into a snarl of knots. It never used to do that when he was dead. "Buffy?"

"No, this's Dawn…who is this?"

"Angel."

There was some incomprehensible muttering on the Italian end of the connection and the sound of bed sheets rustling. Then Dawn shouted, "Buffy! Your evil ex is on the phone!"

"Not evil anymore," Angel muttered into the receiver, but the phone was already in the process of being passed off.

"Who is this? And do you know that I do in fact sleep with a crossbow under my bed?" Buffy for real, this time. He didn't know how he could have ever mistaken Dawn's voice for hers. The younger Summers sister hadn't haunted his dreams for years.

"It's Angel, and I'd be worried if you didn't." He tried to keep his tone light—joking even. Lorne would have been proud. The empathy demon had always been after him to try the "witty banter" thing. Thinking about Lorne only made his stomach hurt more.

"Angel." Her voice utterly emotionless. When she said his name, it was like a brick being dropped onto concrete. He wasn't quite sure what was supposed to give—the brick or the concrete. His heart or his resolve.

"Listen, Buffy, I need to talk to you. It's important."

"What could be so important that the CEO of Evil, Inc. has to call lil ole Slayer me? Don't you have, like, little evil minions to do your bidding?"

Angel winced. He'd deserved that, but he'd been hoping to avoid it. "I resigned."

"You resigned? Big corporate evil just let you empty out your desk and walk away all la-dee-da?"

"Not exactly…" He winced again. "Let's just say there was a dragon involved and leave it at that."

There was a moment of silence, and he imagined her blinking as she tried to digest what he'd just said. "'Dragon'?"

"Dragon."

"Big fire-breathing lizard thing? Ok, maybe there wasn't so much la-dee-da. But that still doesn't explain why you're calling me in the wee hours of the morning."

Angel drew a deep breath (a small part of his mind still rejoicing at the experience). "Have you had the urge to fly to LA for about, oh, the past three weeks?"

There was a brief silence followed by a quick, "No."

He didn't buy it. "Buffy, we went up against the Senior Partners when we left Wolfram & Hart. Nobody survived except Illyria."

"Who?"

"Demon god-king of the primordium…a friend."

"Angel, do we need to talk about the definition of evil and why we're not supposed to be friends with it, 'cause it sounds like you've forgotten. And what do you mean nobody survived? If nobody survived, then how can you be calling me at this ungodly hour?"

"I was getting to that. Gunn, Wes, Spike, me—we all died. Illyria's an old demon—probably the oldest I've ever met. She's a true demon, back from before the time of humans. Hell, she's older than the concepts of good and evil. She brought our bodies back, but apparently she doesn't do souls. The best she could do was set it up so a woman who each of us was attached to would come and call our souls back. I've been told it feels like a tug in the gut and kind of a flash of inspiration that you have to come to the Hyperion."

"But you're not soulless…are you?"

"Soul's intact," he promised. Maybe he shouldn't have called so late—she wasn't thinking sharp. "Cordelia gave it back to me…"

Buffy made a choking / sputtering noise, which he decided to ignore.

"I'm calling about Spike."

"Why?"

"Well, no one's shown up to awaken him yet…"

She cut him off. "And you thought I might be the woman for the job. Nuh-huh, no way I'm playing this little game again, Angel. Not only does that pasty-faced sorriest excuse for a vampire I've ever met have the nerve to tell me whether or not I'm in love with him, but he also doesn't have the guts to tell me when he comes back to life! No, the two of you just come sneaking around, stalking me and my boyfriend all over Rome and then go back to LA without even bothering to say 'hi, how are you doing, Buff?' That would have been the decent thing to do, but, oh no, the big bad vampires just have to slink back home!"

"Andrew wasn't supposed to tell you we dropped by," Angel muttered. "We were actually in Rome to pick up a severed head."

Buffy made a yeah-right noise into the receiver. "It's Andrew. It took me all of six minutes to figure out why he was looking so guilty when I came back from the club that night."

"I never understood why you kept him around…"

"He's fun to pet—like a cute, demented puppy—and he keeps Dawn entertained when I'm out doing Slayery-things… And this is coming from the man who's keeping company with a demon-god-king-thing!"

"Illyria can crush a BMW engine block with her fist. Andrew?"

"Screams like a girl and gets in the way," Buffy admitted. "Aren't you supposed to be convincing me to fly to LA and play Princess Charming for Spike or something?"

He plucked a pen out of the coffee cup on his desk. Slowly, the clutter that was life was finding its way back into the Hyperion. "Buffy, I know you and Spike didn't leave things in the best of places, but he's fading. Illyria doesn't know how much longer they have left. Weeks, maybe."

"'They'?"

"Wesley's still comatose." He weaved the pen through his fingers, trying to keep his voice from cracking. Wes had been with him in LA almost from the beginning. He was, Angel, knew a good man who fought the fight the best he could. Even more amazingly, Wesley was only human. He had no literal inner demons (or outer ones for that matter), no ancient mystical birthright, no superhuman abilities. He was just a disavowed Watcher and a magician of average skill. A genius, probably.

He was also the man who had taken away Connor. Which was unforgivable but not enough to condemn him. The world needed Wesley Wyndam-Pryce too much.

"I don't think he's going to wake up," Angel admitted. "All the women he was attached to are dead."

"I'm sorry."

"As much as Spike annoys me, he doesn't deserve to fade out like that. Whether you loved him or not, you were the center of his world. You can't tell me you aren't feeling some pull to come to him."

"He didn't come to me," she murmured bitterly.

"Well, he started out insubstantial when he first showed up at Wolfram & Hart. He also couldn't leave the city. Every time he tried, he got bounced back into my office—not fun, let me tell you."

"And after he became solid?"

"You'll have to ask him yourself. Why are you being so stubborn about this? An old ally needs your help. The Buffy I knew would have come running in, no hesitation."

Buffy made an unhappy noise. "I'll check the flights tomorrow morning. Good night, Angel."

A click and the sudden lack of echoing signaled that she'd hung up. "Good night, Buffy," he murmured before returning the receiver to its cradle.

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A/N: Sorry it took so long to get this updated. I was distracted, and I really didn't want to write this conversation. I'm not a big Buffy fan (:ducks the flying produce:), and I pretty sure she doesn't sound like herself in this. Oh, well, it's the best I can do.

Thanks to YOUPIN, gopie, justawritier, --J, Louvil, angel-cordy, and Vamp Charisma for taking the time to review. It's much appreciated.