Ugh. Happy pills. Don't even talk to me about happy pills. Angel just got off his most recent trip, and stupid happy pills sent him there. I don't want to hear anything about happy pills!

So, I'm in this hundred year old play, right? Angel and Wes came and watched, and they totally gave me the runaround when I asked them if I was any good. They say I need to work on my acting skills? Those two are terrible.

Anyway, we're walking back home, and Angel saves Rebecca Lowell – REBECCA LOWELL! He didn't even know who she was! She was only on air as Raven in "On Your Own" for like nine seasons! I get that he's all 250 or whatever, but did he ever once watch TV? Ever?

So he saves her from death by way of car, and he's Joe Stoic about it. Doesn't even blink when Oliver Simon (her manager who–apparently–Angel already knew (like it would kill him to share the card he got)) offered him a reward, and continued with the non-blinking when he turned down the money.

Idiot.

So the next morning, as I'm basking in all my newspaper glory (my elbow made the front page of the Calendar section!), Angel wigs about how his rescue didn't make the story, so it's totally not just me craving some attention. Then Rebecca shows up and overhears me telling Angel how her sob story would open business as "Protector to the Stars" for so many other famous people… I tell you, I could have died from embarrassment, and I'm sure there's something in this world that could actually make that happen. They go into the office and from what I managed to overhear, someone's been terrorizing her with letters written in blood (not blood, according to the vampire's nose…do you have the same ability? Or is his vampire sense of smell just way advanced?), stalking, calls in the middle of the night, the thing with the car and all that jazz. She was totally freaked, and rightly so… Talk about creepy.

So Angel gets all weird and doesn't take her case (he's obviously insane). Wesley says he likes her, but if that's the case, then Angel has a really weird way of showing affection. Angel totally didn't deny it, so who knows if it's true. He's verbally challenged that way. So, I faked a vision, hoping for some kind of reaction, but I don't think it worked all that well…

I found out later that Angel spent the night at her house—he had surreptitiously been keeping tabs and rescued her from another stalker attack—and she left him alone in her house the next morning! I owed it to that poor girl to check that he didn't go all GRR on her, right? Right. I show up at her house, cross around my neck and three double half-caf non-fat skinny lattes in hand. One of them had O-pos, but she didn't have to know that, right? The whole disguising blood as coffee thing didn't matter, though, apparently. Turns out she was at lunch, so I go rummaging, and he spills that he told her about his demon-ness! He actually told her, and he wasn't joking! This is like…a monumental breakthrough for him! I was proud and kinda stunned…

Later on, she got attacked…again. She just can't catch a break from this stalker person. He saved her from a would-be gunshot deal, which turned out to be a fake. The bullets were actually blanks, and the stalker was a stuntman hired by her manager—totally taking him off my list of people I want to meet. Rude. Angel told her about it after she invited me to lunch and a shopping spree. That's right: she invited me to lunch and a shopping spree! I was so excited I couldn't hardly hold it in! I did end up squealing more than once…

Anyway, the whole time, she was real gabby, asking a bunch about Angel: what his favorite color is, where does he hail from, what aftershave he uses, if he likes a certain hair product, exactly how old he is, the exact specific details on how someone could make themselves into a vampire… It bugged me all day long, and when I finally told Wesley about what happened (I may have gotten a little distracted when I thought about what I had for lunch), I was way worried about Angel. She could totally have put the whammy on him, and we wouldn't have even known! Turns out, I was right to be worried. By the time Wesley and I got to the office, she was running for her life, saying all kinds of things about how he was insane, trying to kill her and biting her, all of which were true.

Thus: the happy pills. She got her hands on some called Doximal, which apparently were some of the best happy pills on the market. They were definitely a little too happy for me. I said a few…choice…words about her character, and she finally admitted to what she did. Then…Angelus made his appearance. He cut the power to the office, came upstairs, and totally turned into psycho-vamp.

When he came upstairs, the lights were off, the phone was dead, and there was no other way around him. The elevator wasn't working after Miss Lowell broke it while trying to escape, and the only other way out of the office was to go either through the window or around him—no way he would have let either of those things happen, and going through him wasn't an option: I'm not Phantom Dennis.

Wesley tried reasoning with Angel, but Angelus was the one running the show, and reasoning with Angelus never really works, unless it benefits him, as well. While Wesley was trying to be threatening (and it was a sweet, valiant, brave, and hopeless effort), I could feel Rebecca backing up, and by the time Angelus was done with Wesley, she was already at the window. It was like she was hoping to escape his notice, even if she couldn't escape physically.

Then he turned his attention to me. He mocked my acting in that play, told me the honest truth of his opinion (he said that watching and listening to me was worse than being in Hell!), and then insulted Rebecca and me all in one fell swoop, saying that if I took acting lessons from her I'd be even worse than I already was.

I whipped out my water bottle, told him to back off, and let him know what was what. That's right: you're about to get dialogue.

He laughed and said, "What are you gonna do? Melt me?" You read right, Spike. He had the nerve to bring the Wizard of Oz into it. Rude.

So I told him, "One more step and you'll find out. You think this is just water?"

To my credit, he paused for a moment. "You're bluffing."

"Am I? You don't think I wasn't ready for this, do you? That I hadn't prepared for it? Why do you think I have a stake stashed in my desk, a cross in my bag? I think about this happening every single day." And it's true. I do think about it happening every single day. Seems like a good thing, too, otherwise I really wouldn't be prepared.

"That's just drinking water." That's what he thinks.

"Uh-huh. Fresh from a mountain spring, delivered right to our door," (I convinced him sign up for it a couple of months ago) "then blessed every second Tuesday by Father Mackie, the local parish priest, while you're down in the Bat Cave, sleeping through the better part of the day." And he does sleep on Tuesdays…it's like an unwritten rule that it's his unofficial day of sleeping, or something. "You don't believe me?" He totally didn't believe me. So I yelled, "Have some!" And I splashed it on him.

That's right: I splashed it on him.

I think he was bracing himself for pain…he kept groaning and moaning and clutching his face. When he looked back at me, no blisters anywhere, I held up my water bottle and said, "And the Oscar goes to—"

Well. Wesley had woken up by then, and tackled a growling, aggressive, and lethal Angelus into the elevator shaft where he did a little bit of acrobatics on the way down, which knocked him completely unconscious, and then I got the pleasure of going downstairs, helping Wesley grab the man from the shaft, and chain him to the bed.

I'm sad to say…this wasn't the first time I've had to chain him to that stupid mattress.

He woke up after a couple of hours, and the first thing I asked him was a legitimate question: "Are you still evil?" He apologized, of course, and asked about Rebecca. Like she'd stick around after realizing that being young and beautiful forever comes with a price. Wesley was way more sympathetic than I was, but I understand his point. Wesley was right. I did ask that Angel be honest in the future, though. I don't want to have to deal with Angelus to get an honest opinion. And I noticed how he didn't say anything to my statement of expectation of honesty. We did, however, come to the understanding that he and I were still friends. He realized fairly quickly afterward that I wasn't going to undo those chains.

It would take eternity for that to happen.

Disclaimer: The author claims no ownership of any publicly recognizable franchise, including but not limited to: characters, forums, places, and plotlines. No monetary profit is garnered and no copyright infringement is intended.

A/N: Wow. Another month has gone by, and the stress keeps piling.

First, a thank you to cmol8806, whose stress is like mine: way over her head. She's fabulous, and everyone should go check out her stuff and say, "Hey, you're awesome."

Second, as you can tell from the length of the letter, Eternity is one of my favorite episodes from the series. If it isn't my top favorite, it's definitely in the top three, but I'd say it's probably number one.

Hopefully with this letter, I'm bringing the level of doom and gloom to a minimum. It's not quite so dark at this point in the series, and I quite enjoy Cordelia's snark and humor. I hope I did it justice.

Be on the lookout for Spike's reply, but like always: I reserve the right to make no promises. I've updated after a few days, weeks, and months, and I have no idea how things will go from here. Finals are in a few weeks, so hopefully I'll be able to chisel out some time after that, but who knows.

Thank you all for sticking with me, both through timing and this ridiculously long Author's Note. You all are awesome, even if you skipped my lengthy ramblings.

One last thing: did you catch my little quip at the very end? I thought it was quite clever, myself...