The next several days were not pleasant ones in the Cole household. Judith had come home from Angel's and forbidden William to step foot anywhere near Angel ever again. Not negotiable. Not "for just five minutes." Never. End of discussion.

When Mr. Cole returned home, Mrs. Cole wasted no time explaining the new rules, minus a few key points, knowing that William would jump at his father's ignorance to get permission to go out. Sure enough, she had no sooner sat her husband down than a door in the direction of William's room snapped angrily shut, frustrated sniffles clearly audible.

The atmosphere in the flat was at a constant boiling point. William became sulky and prone to outbursts, Judith remained tight-lipped and fearful that William would find a way to undermine her, and Sam found himself caught in the middle and felt—though Judith assured him there was nothing more to tell about this Angel-fellow—quite in the dark about something.

He didn't believe her story that Angel was involved in drug-dealing. William was not old enough to pretend that look of hurt indignation on his face as he yelled, "he is NOT!" Sam pushed as hard as he could, but his wife may as well have been a brick wall for all the good it did. Once again, the lines of communication between Mr. and Mrs. Cole were broken, and neither of them knew how to fix it.

Calder visited William whenever he could. Mrs. Cole had warned Mrs. Lauchley that she might want to keep Calder away from Angel, whom she had reason to believe was involved in "shady deeds." Mrs. Lauchley agreed and forbade Calder from visiting Angel.

Calder went to visit Angel once anyway, but it wasn't the same without William. Angel did, however, give Calder the cross to covertly return to William, as Angel had little use for it. William wore the cross under his shirt in passive resistance; and it gave him immense satisfaction to feel it against his skin as each new argument broke out.

The day came not even a week after Judith had approached Angel, as she knew it must, when the Cole household exploded. Accusations shot like guns, insults tore at hearts, and rants transferred all the build up anger and frustration from one person to another. Mr. Cole stormed out of the flat, slamming the door behind him (not a first), William ran to his room, blinded by tears, slammed his door, and Judith, at a loss for what else to do, also closed the door behind herself as she retreated into her own bedroom.

A few minutes later, William's tear-streaked face peered out from his side of the hall. His mother's muffled sobs seeped under the door. Quietly, he closed his door behind him and stole out of the flat into the darkness.

Angel had been about to go out when William burst through his door, hurtling it with a bang into his wall, the handle narrowly missing a framed vintage photo of Los Angeles city streets at night.

Angel was usually pretty good at dealing with surprises. He had prevailed spectacularly in more than his share of out-of-the-blue demon attacks, and he felt his reflexes had never been better. Unexpected, violent, to-the-death battles Angel could deal with. But when the little boy burst through Angel's door, tears flying behind him, and launched himself against Angel in a surprisingly tight embrace, Angel found he was woefully unprepared for how to react.

William sobbed into Angel's shirt. At a loss for what else to do, Angel uncomfortably patted the boy on the head.

Angel felt a hot, almost burning sensation against his lower stomach. He pulled William's collar slightly aside and found the red string resting on his neck.

"Okay," he said, and, lifting the boy under the arms, took him to the couch. "I'll make you some tea." He gave William a pillow to hold on to and left to heat some water, closing the front door and hanging up his jacket on the way.

When Angel returned he set the cup of tea on the apothecary table in front of the couch, where William was curled up in a fetal position.

William sat up. "Thanks." He snuffled, picking up the tea and taking a sip. "It's good." He tried to rub some of the redness out of his eyes.

Angel waited for William to drink a little before asking, "So are you going to tell me why you're here?"

Through sniffles, William told Angel about the fight he'd just had with his parents. When he stopped talking Angel considered him a few moments.

"Do you know why she won't let you come here anymore?"

William nodded. "She doesn't think it's safe for me to come to a stranger's house all the time. But I told her it is safe and you're not a stranger at all!"

"Did you tell her why it's safe?"

William frowned. "What do you mean?"

Angel leaned forward. "Did you tell her why you think it's okay for you to come here, knowing what I am and what I've done?"

William furrowed his brow in confusion. "No. She doesn't know you're a vampire. If I told her she'd think I'm crazy."

Aha. If there was one thing Angel knew about, it was the problems that lack of communication could cause. Angel grinned slightly, though he wasn't sure why. "Yes she does, William. That's why she doesn't want you near me."

William's face suddenly shone with a brilliant, glowing hope; the kind that only children seem to be able to achieve. "So you can explain it to her! Explain everything like you did for me! Explain how you're good now and you help people instead of eating them! Tell her everything; then she'll have to let me come back! Please!"

Angel studied the boy's eyes. It was incredible how much depth could come out of such a small person as he pleaded with all his might for Angel to fix everything. Angel took a breath.

"I could tell her," he began, "but if she doesn't want to hear it, there's not much I can do. I can't force her to change her mind." William's face fell. "It might be better if she heard it from you."

"She won't listen to me."

"Maybe she will now."

William sighed and set down his tea cup so he could flop back onto the pillow.

"I'm going to go call your mother," Angel said, taking the blanket from the back of the couch and draping it over the boy. "I'll be back soon."

Angel resisted the paternal urge to stroke William's hair before leaving.

The library lights were dim as Angel sat down to call Mrs. Cole. Holding his breath in a habitual gesture of apprehension, he tapped through the directory until he found the Cole residence, selected the entry, and waited.

Mrs. Cole's emotionally fatigued face appeared on the screen in the wall, hardening into cold suspicion as soon as she recognized Angel.

"Yes?"

"Hello, Mrs. Cole. Look, I know it's late," Angel took a breath, "but I just thought you'd like to know that William is here." Her eyes shifted into an expression of shock and mild skepticism.

"Just a minute," she said, and she disappeared from view. Angel heard a soft knock, William's name, a door open, and a muffled gasp somewhere in the background. A few seconds later, Mrs. Cole reappeared.

"What do you want?" she demanded. "Money? Fame? I'll give you money, but I'm not breathing a word of this to anyone. You're not going to get any glory by messing with our lives!"

"No," Angel tried to ignore the sting in his gut. He didn't care what people thought of him, remember? "I didn't kidnap your son; he ran away. Again," he emphasized a little harder than he meant to. "Look, I just called to let you know where your son is and that he's safe. That's all."

"Safe?" she repeated.

Angel shivered slightly. Her quiet tone of icy disbelief and piercing stare reminded Angel eerily of Cordelia.

"I may be human, but I'm not an idiot. I know what you are."

Angel glared coldly back at her for a moment, gripping his hands together in an effort to gather composure. "But I guess you don't remember that I saved your son's life."

Most people would have missed it, but Angel noticed the slight shift in her eyes that told him she had forgotten the incident that caused this whole mess in the first place. Mrs. Cole crossed her arms.

"You brought him home, yes. But that does not give you a gold medal of honor. Given enough time, the police would have found him and brought him home, as well."

Angel snorted. "What they could find of him." Speaking through a cold jaw, Angel said, "I don't kill people, Mrs. Cole. Now, if you want, I'll bring William home right now. Otherwise, you can pick him up in the morning. It's up to you."

Mrs. Cole considered his proposition with unblinking eyes, neither option of which she seemed to much care for. Finally, with a countenance of preserving dignity, though her eyes fell in cold submission, she said, "Very well. Please bring him here."

Angel nodded and turned off the screen without saying goodbye.

Mrs. Cole answered the door almost immediately.

"Oh, William," Mrs. Cole whispered, and gently kissed William's forehead. She stroked his head a moment, then looked up at Angel. She hesitated a moment before quietly thanking him. He nodded once in acknowledgement. Then came the awkward moment of silence. Finally, Mrs. Cole said,

"His room is just down the hall, here, if you could…." Mrs. Cole stepped back into the flat and held the door open for Angel. Angel felt the invisible barrier gently pushing him away from the door and he glanced around uncomfortably.

"I…I can't…"

Mrs. Cole looked at him quizzically. Angel elaborated, "I haven't been invited…"

Understanding crossed her face. It seemed to take forever for her to make up her mind.

"A-alright. Um… How exactly do I…invite you? I mean, is there a special phrase, or…?"

"No," Angel replied. "Anything that can be construed as an invitation will work." Then he added, quietly, "You need to be careful about that, actually."

She nodded. "Well, then." She took a breath of resolve, "Come in."

The barrier vanished instantly. Angel hesitated, then stepped forward across the threshold.

"Back here." She led Angel down the hall and into a room filled with spaceships, soldiers, dinosaurs, building blocks, and other more modern toys Angel did not recognize.

Mrs. Cole pulled back the covers on William's bed and Angel laid him down. He stepped back while Mrs. Cole took off William's shoes, and by the time she turned to inquire about the blanket, he was gone.

Angel had just warmed up breakfast when Mrs. Cole came in the early afternoon of the following day. Leaving the glass in the kitchen, he answered.

"Good day," Mrs. Cole said with a stiff politeness as Angel opened the door to her. She held out the folded blanket she was holding, as if presenting a solemn award. Angel took it, just as solemnly. He expected Mrs. Cole to end it there, but instead she spoke.

"Angel, may I come in for a moment?"

He stepped aside reluctantly, placing his blanket on a nearby chair before closing the door behind Mrs. Cole. He half expected to find her holding a stake in her hand when he turned around, but she was facing him with her hands clasped only around each other in front of herself, her purse slung back behind one hip-very inconvenient if she planned on withdrawing anything from it. Angel took a moment to realize that this was a mere human being he was evaluating for confrontation.

He squared himself up, matching her straight posture as he waited for her to say whatever it was she'd come to tell him.

"William told me a strange story this morning. He told me about a horribly evil vampire—quite brutal and cruel, by the sound of it—who was cursed by gypsies hundreds of years ago to be good. Now he goes about saving people, trying to make up for the thousands he killed when he was bad."

Angel didn't say anything.

"Is it true?"

Angel considered his response. "More or less."

"How much?"

Angel appraised her a moment before speaking. He was so tired of giving this explanation, this excuse for his good behavior or his bad behavior. He'd come to appreciate the darker community of Galway; the demons and vampires and other creatures he dealt with and commanded respect from, and the few he'd actually befriended. They never asked questions or tried to figure him out.

But Judith Cole was a human being, and human beings had certain needs: to corroborate their beliefs with their experiences, to be given all information they think could possibly be relevant to them. Angel owed nothing to this woman, but his own human side wasn't so lost that he didn't feel an intrinsic-and also inconvenient-pull to give her the explanation she wanted. More than anything, his parental side understood the need to know if your son will be safe.

"The moment you become a vampire," Angel told her, "your soul—your conscience—leaves your body and the demon takes over. For 150 years that's what I was. Just the demon. Innately evil without a conscience to separate good from bad."

He paused briefly to watch her nod thoughtfully as the information sank in. Then he continued, "When I was cursed with a soul, not only could I suddenly distinguish between right and wrong, not only could I remember every single wrong thing I'd done ever, but," he took a breath, "I also cared."

She nodded slowly again, but the corners of her mouth began to turn down in a hard frown. "And now as penitence you save people? How touching. Have you filled your quota yet? Have you saved as many as you killed?"

"I stopped counting a long time ago." Angel hesitated and decided that she could both take what he had to say, and she that had the right to hear it. "What William told you was misleading. I don't go looking for people to save anymore. If I come across someone in trouble, like your son, I'll step in. But after a few hundred years of realizing that nothing you do will absolve you of your sins, you tend to stop trying so hard. And the price for trying to absolve yourself is…more than you can imagine."

Mrs. Cole studied Angel hard, her gaze as scrutinizing as Cordelia's and commanding as Darla's. Angel felt like a man facing a supreme judge and suppressed a shiver.

"So you've given up," she said.

"It's not quite so simple."

"Isn't it? I will never be a perfect mother. Should I stop trying?"

"Of course not," Angel shook his head. "A parent has to do whatever they can for their child; the bond of duty is," the words caught ever so briefly in his throat, "unbreakable. This is completely different. The people I hurt are long gone and…there are factors you will never know. Like I said: I'll help people who need it. But I don't search for lost souls to save anymore."

Mrs. Cole contemplated him for a moment. "Then why not give in completely?" she asked finally, now crossing her arms in front of her chest. "Wouldn't it be easier to live like you used to, to give into your innate evil, even with a conscience? Many criminals do it."

"I tried that once. It didn't work out too well."

Mrs. Cole bit her lip, evidently trying to work out if that was something to be viewed positively. Angel thought it should be, but then, he couldn't exactly be objective about it.

"So being good is just a default?" she asked eventually.

Angel didn't answer immediately. "I learned from…that experience…that if nothing I do will matter in the end, then all that matters is what I do now. So I chose the side of good, even if it wouldn't choose me."

Mrs. Cole raised her eyebrows. "That's profound."

"I thought so."

There was silence again, during which time Mrs. Cole seemed to decide that it was time to go. She nodded decisively and made for the door, which Angel opened for her. Halfway out, she paused and looked back at Angel.

"Angel, I need several days to digest all of this. Depending on… I don't know what. Depending, William and I may stop in. If that's alright."

Angel hid his surprise. Had he passed some sort of test? He hadn't even tried to leave room for the benefit of doubt.

Angel didn't like social calls, but he saw no reason to burn bridges, either. "I'll make sure to have some milk for the tea," he said.

Angel heard nothing from the Coles for more than a week. His life temporarily resumed the quiet solace he was used to, interrupted only occasionally by someone wanting supernatural advice. And, of course, that one night when the Doctor and the chaos that seemed to follow him interrupted the solace like a minor explosion.

As the milk sat in his fridge he vaguely wondered if it would be there until it went sour. It gradually got pushed back behind jugs of blood as the days passed.

One day, a Teufel demon came to see him. She was new to the area and looking for a place to nest. Angel had told her that he wasn't a real estate agent, but that he knew a guy-

No, no, she'd interrupted, it was just that there was a lot of ritualistic preparation to do before she could lay her eggs, and she was hoping she could pay him to prepare a few of the things she needed for protective wards during the six months she would be nesting.

"The father doesn't want anything to do with us, you see," she explained, laying on the single mother desperation through tear-filled reptilian eyes. "He's already got child support for two thousand others…"

Angel was unsympathetic to her plight, since Teufel females routinely kicked the male out of the nest after fertilization, if not kill him outright. He pointed this out to her, and her face had fallen briefly before perking back up and saying cheerfully that she couldn't be blamed for trying to get a discount, and then offered a sizable sum to prepare the wards. Angel agreed and promised to have them ready by that night.

He was in the midst of preparing the powder that was to be sprinkled around doors, windows, and other cracks when there was a knock at the door. It wasn't a strong knock, but it had substance (if knocks could have substance), and it was steady. Couple that with the two sets of footsteps that had preceded the knock (one adult-size, and one child-size), and Angel was pretty sure he knew who it was. He wished they had only waited a little while longer. He glanced at the powder. It needed to be charged with power from a simple spell and then quickly encased in glass. It would stay fresh a few more minutes, but he couldn't delay much longer than that.

Cursing mildly to himself, he got up quickly to answer the door. When he opened it, he saw the forced calm, steady face of Judith Cole, but heard the excited voice of William.

"Hi, Angel!" A shadow of a smile crept onto Angel's face-though he couldn't have said why-as he opened the door wider for them to come in.

"What are you doing?" William asked, immediately noticing various herbs and jars of ingredients on Angel's apothecary table.

"Uh…" Angel hesitated. "Protective ward," he admitted, hoping that it sounded innocuous enough to not raise a red flag for Mrs. Cole. For good measure, he added, "there's this nesting demon mother who needs it to keep her young safe..."

Mrs. Cole narrowed her eyes suspiciously. "Her demon young?"

Angel swallowed nervously. "Yeah."

He could almost hear the alarms in his head: Abort now! Mother disapproves! Danger!

"Wow!" William exclaimed, "Can I help?"

"No."

William's face fell. Angel caught Mrs. Cole's eyes, but quickly looked away. She had to choose the moment he was doing magic to stop by.

"Well. I hope it's not a bad time," she said, clearly realizing that it was.

"No," Angel lied. "No, it's fine." There was a brief pause. "It's just that this is time-sensitive, and I need to finish, so…"

"Can we watch?" William asked eagerly.

"No," Angel said again, racking his brains for something to distract William. "Hey, why don't you go show your mom how you can turn on a gas stove? I'll be there in just a minute."

"Good idea," Mrs. Cole agreed. "I'd like to see that, Will." She pointedly took his hand. With one last glance at the magic ingredients, William agreed and led his mother to the kitchen.

Angel sat down and finished the powder quickly, murmuring the words under his breath so that the people in his kitchen couldn't hear. The tiny brown granules vibrated gently as he funneled them into a glass jar and closed the lid tightly.

Angel took his time sweeping the spilled powder away and stashing his ingredients in the various drawers of his apothecary table. He glanced occasionally in the direction of his kitchen and the voices coming from it, wondering how long they were planning on staying. Angel surprised himself with the thought that he wouldn't mind if it were just the boy in there—an eager listener to his adventure stories—but the mother…

Finally, there was nothing left to do but rinse the bowl he had used to mix everything. Steeling himself, he picked up the bowl and returned to his guests.

William was just finishing telling his mother how things tasted better when heated slowly as Angel entered and made his way to the sink.

"How'd it go?" William asked eagerly.

"Fine," Angel replied, turning on the faucet. "Water nearly ready?" He noted the steam beginning to issue from the kettle. He shook the excess water from the bowl and placed it carefully on the counter to dry. He rubbed a towel quickly over his hands before setting about preparing the tea pot.

"I know I'm old-fashioned," he said uncomfortably as he felt Mrs. Cole's curious and judging eyes on him, "but eventually you stop trying to keep up with every new convenience they invent. The beginning of the technology age nearly killed me…" He turned his head to offer a small smile—the result of an unfamiliar urge to appear friendly—which she returned equally small.

"You seem to have healed well," she commented. The 'minor explosion' of the Doctor's visit the previous week had been a bit literal. Mrs. Cole and William had come across Angel after he'd had his leg broken and been tossed off an overhead pedestrian walkway. Honestly, Angel was amazed that hadn't scared her off for good.

"I have a high pain tolerance," Angel told her. "The leg still looks pretty bad, but I can walk on it now."

"Can I see?" William asked, wide eyes tracking down to Angel's shins. Angel bent and lifted up the left leg of his trousers, revealing a long, knotted purple scar running across both the front and back of his shins. Damn giant pincers. The scar would heal eventually, for the most part, especially with the salve he was using, but it had hurt. A lot.

"Wooooowwww…" William murmured delightedly.

"I assume the situation is taken care of?" Mrs. Cole asked, looking up at Angel.

"Yeah," Angel told her, dropping the trouser leg. "Better than I thought, actually. The demon is home. And getting help." It had actually been an alien, and when Angel said 'home,' he meant 'planet,' but he didn't want to get into the explanation of it all.

"Oh," Mrs. Cole sounded just as surprised as Angel had felt when he'd had the time to sit back about think about what had happened. "That's...wonderful."

"Yeah," Angel nodded. "I guess it is." Silence fell and he quickly turned back to preparing the teapot for something to do.

"Well," Mrs. Cole said, standing, "I guess I'll get the milk, shall I?" She reached for the door of the fridge and pulled, only to have it yanked out of her grasp as it flew shut.

"William!" she admonished.

"Trust me, Mum, you don't want to look in there," William said wisely. "I'll get the milk. You can get the sugar." He pointed to the cupboard across the way.

Angel had to turn so they would not see his smile.

A/N - The events mentioned in this last scene are from a Doctor Who/Angel crossover story, which is part of a series I'm co-writing. If you're interested to read it, it's called "War Stories" and can be found under the pen name "Constant Babble."