The setting is the Hellmouth, which is now closed. The 120 foot-wide, sixty foot-high steel and brick dome the First built atop the Hellmouth has been damaged by the severe earthquake that occurred only seconds earlier. Of those who fought, only the five surviving Potentials-turned-Slayers (Rona, Amanda, Madari, Fadila and Ariella) are left standing, though Amanda and Fadila, both badly injured, are propped up by Rona and Fadila, respectively. For her part, Madari is bleeding heavily from a cut on her forehead and feels dizzy because of a minor concussion. Faith, Kennedy and Andrew lie dead. Spike was vaporized near the center of the Arena, an area now covered by heaps of fallen brick. The lower thirty feet of wall, covering the outer perimeter of the building, survived intact, providing shelter and shade. The entirety of the structure's steel skeleton survived, an eerie, overbearing reminder of the First's once-enveloping presence. From left to right, Willow, Dawn, Anya and Giles lie on the ground. Buffy lies just to Rupert's right, and Xander kneels to Willow's right. Two medics each work frantically on Giles, Anya and Willow. Angel and friends have just arrived, and are overwhelmed by the carnage. Angel stands to Buffy's left. Connor kneels to Dawn's left, holding her left hand. Wesley stands in front of Faith's body, trying to make sense of the war zone as the new Slayers gather behind him. Gunn and Fred keep their distance, looking on from atop some rubble thirty feet away and feeling very much the outsiders. So this is what the Hellmouth looked and sounded like: blood, screaming, death, agony, suffering. And that was after a victory.

"We got a pulse!," a medic working on Giles announces, to Buffy's enormous relief.

"Take him to the field hospital," the man in charge of the operation commands.

"Is it still standing?," the other medic working on Giles asks, on account of the very recent and very strong earthquake.

"It better be." They put Giles on a stretcher and quickly wheel him outside to a helicopter. Buffy and Angel want to follow. But she can't, because her right leg is broken. And he can't, because it's a little past eight in the morning and the sun is out. A medic tries to work on Buffy, who in addition to the broken leg has a large gash just under her left rib cage which, to someone who doesn't know she's a Slayer, looks mortal.

"I'm fine!," she insists. The guy assumes she's in shock.

"You need to lie don't. Don't move."

"It's okay, Buffy," Angel offers. "He's here to help. You did your job. Now let him do his and you'll be fine." Already in great physical pain and even greater psychological pain, Buffy figures she really is dying. Otherwise, why would she conjure this hallucination of Angel to comfort her?

"She's not breathing!," the woman tending to Willow yells out. The commander walks over to have a look.

"Patient's comatose," a male medic reports.

"And possibly brain dead," the leader whispers under his breath as he looks at her severe head wound. "She needs a respirator." The two medics carry Willow out. Buffy notices, and sits up as Willow goes by. Everything's coming unraveled. The person tending to her stomach wound pushes Buffy back down as another medic tries to put a splint on her broken leg. No longer able to look at Buffy's anguished, teary face while knowing he can't help her, Angel stands up, turns around, looks down and puts his right hand to his eyes. He takes a couple steps, sees Faith's body on the ground through his fingers, and takes his hand away from his eyes. Wesley stands just to his left. She looks so peaceful and serene. The mortal wound, which entered through her back and pierced her heart, is not even visible. Given how banged-up the survivors are, it's shocking to see a casualty look so unscathed. Any moment, they expect her to open her eyes and stand up.

"When you face death every day, you stop taking it seriously," Wesley begins. "You forget how easily lives can be lost, and how fortunate you are to have survived this long. Faith, too, had been fortunate. She survived her own recklessness, though she did not intend to. But even Slayers are mortal." The talk of mortality seems odd to Angel, until he realizes that Wesley is mostly talking to himself, and partly talking to the Potentials standing behind Wes. Then Angel counts them. He remembers Wesley's theory about how to kill Nina, and realizes they're the only fighters standing. The five Potentials must be Slayers. But how? This only raised more questions. And Angel already had plenty of those.

"Everything's gonna be alright. Just hang in there, lover," Connor says to Dawn as he holds her left hand in his left hand and tries to wipe the tears from her eyes with his right. Through all the tears of mourning and pain, he looks really blurry. She blinks twice. Still blurry.

"Connor. Connor? You can't be. You're not. You're not real." Connor's astonished. And a little hurt. Their relationship was the one thing is his life that wasn't a lie.

"This," Connor says, kissing her left hand, "is real. We're real." He leans down and kisses her forehead. Dawn figures she's passed out from the pain and this is a dream. Two medics push Connor away. One applies pressure to her stomach laceration. The other one notices that her left leg is bent while her right leg is straight.

"Something wrong with your leg?"

"My, my kneecap." The medic touches it ever so slightly with his right index finger, and Dawn screams bloody murder. "Is broken!," she angrily adds in a long, guttural tone after shrieking at the top of her lungs for five seconds.

"She gonna be alright?," Connor nervously asks. It's awful to see his love in so much pain and be unable to help her.

"If you let us do our job," the medic trying to stop the bleeding from the stomach wound says. Connor steps back and watches a little while longer. One man immobilizes her right leg and puts a brace around the knee, then talks to his colleague, who gets on his radio to the infirmary about where to send the patient. Soon, Connor's had enough of watching Dawn suffer, and like his father, has to turn away. He looks at the five girls, who stand there, bloody and shaken, their eyes vacant, as if they just lost something. Connor doesn't know that it's their innocence, since he lost that too early in life to even know he had it. He looks back at Dawn's face, contorted in agony, and turns away with tears in his eyes. He looks down at the ground and puts his right hand up to cover them so no one will see. Connor smells Angel to his right. He puts his left arm around his son's shoulders. The boy scowls in disapproval.

"It wasn't our time to be heroes." Connor notices that Angel sounds a little choked up. He glances to his right, and sees that his dad, too, is crying. This makes him feel even more embarrassed. He wiggles free from his father's grasp.

"I let them hurt her," Connor responds. Angel decides his son might not be ready for displays of paternal bonding and father-son empathy. In their family, a loving son is one who doesn't actively desire to kill his father. Meanwhile, Gunn and Fred slowly creep towards the carnage.

"Pulse feels weak," one of the two medics working on Anya states.

"Getting weaker," the other one nervously adds. Their boss walks over and lowers his head towards Anya.

"Hear that gurgle?," he asks them. "Pinhole prick in the diaphragm. Move out." They slowly and carefully lift her up and start carrying her. "Go!," he shouts, causing them to quicken their pace. Gunn moves one way and Fred the other as they rush right in between them.

"Anya," Gunn says.

"Did you see all that blood?," Fred asks, putting her hand to her mouth.

"We only have two choppers?," the outraged officer barks from outside. "Then take one of theirs!," he orders, commandeering one of the Apache fighters. His broken right arm in a sling, Xander ditches his medic and runs after Anya, but they don't allow him in the helicopter. Inside, Connor stares down at Faith, something Wes, Angel and the new Slayers have already done enough of. The girls wander aimlessly towards the center of the room, where they had ripped the Titan apart.

"We didn't kill her," Amanda notes depressingly.

"She ain't comin' back," Rona responds. "Even if she puts herself back together again."

"What now?," Ariella asks, provoking silence.

"Ask him," Madari proposes, looking back at Wesley. They walk up to him.

"Now what?," Fadila inquires. And it occurs to Wesley that he's acquired a whole slew of new, unforeseen responsibilities. Angel looks through the open door out into the sunlight, and sees Kate. It's been two years. She's talking with Mayor Santos, whom Angel recognizes from television.

"What happened to Rupert?," Kate asks.

"I don't know. I don't know. They took him away. I don't even know if he's - "

Kate hugs Stella to comfort her. "He'll make it," Kate assures her, not quite believing her own words. "You know Rupert. He's tough. Probably survived worse." From forty feet away, Angel can hear every word. Kate looks devastated. How did she know Giles?

Two medics each continue working on Buffy and Dawn, while two others with nothing to do catch sight of Amanda and Fadila, both of whom are bleeding far too profusely to be standing up. They put up no resistance when told to lie down so the docs can get a look at their injuries. Amanda has a suspicious neck wound and a slashed right hamstring that's soaked her jeans in blood. Fadila has a deep stab wound in her right lung. The head of the operation re-enters the Terrordome, handing gauze pads to Ariella and Madari to deal with their cut foreheads. Rona, whose the only one to emerge relatively unscathed, feels somewhat ashamed of that fact. It makes her feel as if she wasn't as brave or didn't fight as hard, which wasn't the case. The leader then looks over Buffy and Dawn.

"Cuts are shallow. No sign of sepsis," he hears while simultaneously talking on the phone. A few seconds later, he hangs up.

"She goes to Santa Barbara," he orders regarding Buffy. "She goes to Los Angeles," he continues, pointing at Dawn.

"What?"

"She needs a specialist to patch up that knee. They're all going to civilian hospitals eventually. Might as well start with those already in the clear."

"What about them?," the guy working on Fadila asks.

"Santa Barbara. Both." He then points at Madari. "And have someone get this one to the infirmary. I think she needs stitches." Buffy and Dawn are carried out on stretchers. Angel wants to follow Buffy, but can't. Connor wants to follow Dawn, and can. But only so far. The head medic called in two more choppers from the base four miles away, and they're just arriving. Kate sees Buffy, and Buffy sees Kate. She rushes over to Buffy, her hair blown up in the air by the helicopters landing behind her.

"Hang in there, Buffy. They'll have you and all your friends sown up in no time."

"I failed. I failed them."

"Nonsense. You won. You're a hero."

"No. I was," Buffy plaintively responds before being lifted into the helicopter. To Kate's right, she sees Connor trying to get in the chopper carrying Dawn. She's never seem the young man before, but the fiery look in his eyes when a soldier tries to tell him he can't go along scares Kate. She doesn't want the kid to get his ass kicked. Okay, so she still has something of a knack for misreading situations. Kate rushes over and pushes Connor back.

"You can't go." After backing up fifteen feet, he angrily swats Kate's hands off of him. Angel's been watching all along. Seeing Kate try to console Buffy was eerie. But this is strangely familiar. He just hopes Connor wouldn't knock her out.

"I have to," Connor retorts.

"She needs the doctors. Not you," Kate yells over the din of the whirling helicopter blade. No she's done it. Nobody tells Connor that Dawn doesn't need him. Even if that person is technically right.

"You can't keep me away from her. No one can." Buffy had already tried and failed. Who did this non-Slayer woman think she was? Meanwhile, Kate's wondering who the hell this boy thinks he is.

"Let's put things in prospective, Romeo. Those doctors are trying to save her life. You want to get in their way?"

"I won't." He tries to surge forward, but Kate holds him back.

"Family only." She knows he's not that.

"I'm her husband," he pleads. Angel's jaw drops when he hears this. Connor definitely has a scolding coming.

"Nice try, kid." Kate scoffs. She knows Buffy's little sister isn't married. The helicopter door closes and it lifts off the ground, throwing Connor's hair back. He takes a few seconds to control his anger and wait for the noise to pass, watching his love fly away.

"Where are they taking her?" Kate walks past Connor. He grabs her right arm and spins her around. Boy's got quite a grip. "I said, where are they taking her?"

"I was going to talk to someone and find out," she replies condescendingly. "Take your hand off me, and I maybe I can get you an answer." Connor lets go and glares at her. Kate turns back around, shudders and walks towards the man in charge. She glances back at Connor for a moment. He's still staring daggers at her. Something about that intense, angry young man unsettles her. Angel ducks his head out of the doorway so she can't see him. Wes, Gunn and Fred walk over to Angel.

"I always thought you were exaggeratin' 'bout the Hellmouth," Gunn confesses. "Damn. Turns out it's even worse that you said."

"You're right about that," Angel dejectedly replies.

"Guess we came on a really bad day," Fred offers. "Never thought I'd say that about a day when the world was saved."

"The greater the victory, the greater the price," Wesley intones. He's brooding almost as much as Angel.

"It didn't have to be like this," Angel answers, rebutting Wesley's comforting fatalism.

"Buffy was right," Wes counters. "It wasn't our battle to win," he adds, looking at Rona and the other new Slayers.

"Too bad some the of the victors couldn't live to see it," Gunn comments, referring to Faith.

"Poor Lindsey," Fred notes.

"Oh my God," Angel replies.

"Someone has to tell him," Wesley declares.

"I think I got his number in my Palm," Fred reports. Angel takes out his phone.

"You!," Wes exclaims. "Angel, with all due respect, I believe you're the last person he'd want to hear this news from."

"Show of hands: who here knows what it's like to lose the love of your life?"

"That was completely different," Wes responds.

"She came back," Gunn explains.

"And after Darla, he'd begin to associate you with taking his women away," Wesley adds.

Angel hears a zipper forty feet to his left. A soldier closes Andrew's body bag. Kennedy's has already been shut. Faith's is being carried out by two soldiers who dutifully perform their job without asking questions. They notice that the injured have been whisked away with astonishing speed. Other than the handful of soldiers, they are alone. To Angel, this is apt. It symbolizes that he came too late. Connor rushes in.

"Dawn's going to LA. They wouldn't let me go with her. Well, SHE wouldn't." Apparently, angry personal misunderstandings with Kate was an inherited trait.

"Which hospital?," Fred asks.

Connor thinks about this, then looks distressed. "I don't know. I didn't ask. How many are there?" He runs back outside. Meanwhile, Graham walks over, holding some clothes.

"Hi Fred."

"Oh, hey Graham," she nervously responds, combining the awkwardness of the morning after with the awkwardness of having witnessed the aftermath of a massacre.

"I found these in the wreckage, near the, umm, cones, or conic sections, one of which may have been used as a weapon, though it can't be matched with any of the wounds. Anyway, the clothes don't correspond to any of the bodies."

"They're Spike's," Anger responds, recognizing the smell and the apparel. "He must have been staked or burnt in the sun."

"Then why did his clothes survive?," Fred asks.

"These belong to Hostile 17?," Graham asks. He looks down at the jacket. "That's where I've this before."

"Can I see those?," Wesley asks.

"Sure. I don't have any use for them."

"Thanks," Fred offers. Graham flashes a tentative half-smile, then walks away. He looks up at the partially-destroyed dome, then down at the blood on the floor.

"Mouth of Hell indeed." He walks out to brief his superiors. Angel, Wes, Fred and Gunn are now completely alone in the cavernous, rubble-strewn, blood-stained arena.

"What do we do now?," Gunn asks.

"What does Buffy do?," Angel adds.

As someone who had worked closely with Lindsey on multiple occasions, and as someone who had reported the deaths of soldiers to their friends and loved ones on more than one occasion, Graham thought it was his responsibility to tell Lindsey. He is standing in the hallway outside a Tupelo, Mississippi courtroom when his phone rings. "Hello?" He face quickly turns ashen. "I understand. She told me there was a good chance she wasn't going to make it out of Sunnydale. Just last night, actually. Thank you, Graham, for calling. I know it's a tough thing to do." He drops the phone to the ground and stands there, frozen. A young man pops his head out the door.

"Mister MacDonald? Mister MacDonald, it's time for your closing."

"Of course. I'll be right in, Gene."

"Is that your phone?" Eugene picks up the phone and slides the battery back in.

"Put in my briefcase. I'll be right in. Just . . . preparing." The young man does as he is told. Lindsey takes a little while longer to collect himself. Before entering the courtroom.

"If only I'd sent them in five minutes earlier," Stella says to the surgeon just outside the temporary military hospital to the west of Sunnydale.

"It wouldn't have mattered," he responds. the outer lining of his right ventricle had been pierced clear through.

"You could have fixed that. If he had gotten here early enough."

"Unless he was stabbed on the operating table itself, it would have been too late. I'm sorry for your loss, Mayor. But there was nothing you could have done." Angel is under a tent about a hundred yards away, leaning against a table and looking at the grass. Connor's leaning back and looking down three feet to Angel's right.

"We should have stayed," Connor states. "Slept on the ground. Or under that dome. Then we would have been there. Once the fighting started, even Buffy would welcome the help."

"It wasn't our fight," Angel maintains, not in spite of the fact that he doesn't believe these words, but because he doesn't believe these words.

"I was wrong," Wesley declares. He stands in front of Angel and to his left. Gunn stands in front of Wesley and directly to Angel's left, at the end of the table.

"About how they won?," Gunn asks.

"No. About who would be responsible for the victory. It was a foolish mistake. To defeat so great a foe requires more than a mere reinforcements. It demands a paradigm shift, the creation of something which was absent at the start of the conflict. Something that would make the battle obsolete. Anyone attempting to kill Potential Slayers from now on will be in for a rude awakening."

"They told you how it happened?," Connor asks Wes.

"Fadila and Amanda are receiving medical care. Madari, Ella and Rona are being checked for shock. No, I haven't ask them. I didn't have to. And, at least for today, I don't want to."

"I'm a little in the dark on everything," Gunn comments.

"We all are," Angel concurs.

"Are they Slayers?," Connor asks.

"They have to be," Wes answers.

"How?," Gunn wonders.

"Willow," Wes guesses.

"It would have to be," Angel concludes.

"And how did Spike die but leave his clothes?," Gunn asks.

"That part doesn't make any sense," Angel concedes. Connor glances at the clothes.

"He left his socks, but not his underwear." Angel, Gunn and Wes look at each other. None of them want to be having a discussion about Spike's undergarments. "Maybe he wasn't wearing any," Connor theorizes, causing Angel and Wesley to cringe.

"Spike died commando?," Gunn jokes. Amidst all the tragedy, one had to find something humorous to keep from getting overwhelmed. Fred walks into the tent. Angel and Connor stand straight up.

"I talked to Graham, who's talked to all the medical people. Rupert Giles is dead."

"What?," Angel exclaims. "He was alive when they brought him here."

"No. He died on the way. Stabbed in the heart. Nothing they could do." Angel and Wes take the news hard. "Willow is, umm, in a coma. They don't know if she'll ever wake up." A tear comes out of the outside of Fred's right eye, and she wipes it off her cheek and regains her composure. "Anya is in stable but guarded condition. Here's the rest of the information," she hands Angel a sheet of paper saying which hospital in which town each person is in. "Willow's getting sent down to our town, cause they got the best facilities for something like this. Anya's goin' to Santa Barbara, where Buffy and the others are." Angel reads the list. Connor looks over his right shoulder.

"How are the girls?," Wes asks.

"You mean the ones still here? They're fine. Just gettin' some juice, maybe something to eat. I can take you to them."

"I hope there's enough room in the car," Wes declares. It takes a few seconds for everyone to realize the implication.

"Shouldn't they stay with Buffy?," Angel asks.

"Rupert said that if anything happened to him, I was entrusted with their care." News of this responsibility causes a few more seconds of silence.

"We got the rooms," Gunn notes.

"Did Rupert want them to work for us?," Angel asks with some skepticism.

"Technically, they work for the Council, which is responsible for paying them."

"Paying them?," Angel gasps. "When did Slayers start getting paid?"

"Since at least a half-hour ago, when I talked to Claude Marcel."

"The guy who brought us all those books?," Fred asks.

"Rupert had made him acting leader of the Council. Now he's the, official leader," Wesley pauses due to the fact that Rupert's death caused this change. "He's adopted a policy of laissez-faire. The Slayers will be in charge. The Watcher's role is advisory."

"So, in a sense, nothing's changed," Angel quips.

"They can go home. They can quit. They can work in Los Angeles. They can go to Paris and work with Claude. It's entirely up to them."

"So are you still working for me?," Angel asks. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean that to sound crass."

"You're right. I have been given dual responsibilities. Which, for the time being, shouldn't conflict. The Slayers can assist us in our work, or simply patrol, or decide they don't like Los Angeles, in which case they are no longer my charges. Instead of a Watcher being permanently attached to a particular Slayer, we are now assigned regions and expected assist any Slayer who comes to that region."

"Are they paying you?," Gunn inquires.

"Actually, no. Because I work full-time for Angel Investigations and therefore only part-time for the Council. Claude said it's cost-cutting measures like this which enable him to pay Slayers."

"Do they get extra for savin' the world?," Fred asks.

Lindsey walks out of the courtroom, stone-faced. He pays no attention to the reporters, or the cameras, or even his other two co-counsels and his clients. They escape the crowd by entering a small conference room. "That was incredible!," Eugene exults as they walk through the door.

"Just doing my job."

"And the way your eyes teared-up at just the right moment," Tamara, his other co-counsel, adds. "Did you ever do acting?"

"It was nothing," Lindsey says as he sits down and continues to not make eye contact with anyone. He just stares blankly at the wall.

"It was good," one of his clients softly offers. The other defendant nods.

"Let's hope it was enough. Otherwise, every word was worthless." His phone rings.

"Lindsey," Fred says. "I'm sorry, but - "

"I know."

"You do? You, umm, know about Faith?"

"I know." He hangs up.

At half past noon, Clayton Jenkins walks into David Lister's office holding a piece of paper. "Have you heard?," Clay asks with a smile. David leans back in his chair and clicks open an email on his computer screen.

"Old news. Just because you're on the West Coast doesn't mean you can be three hours behind," David scornfully jokes. Clayton slams the piece of paper down onto David's desk, puts his hands on the near side of the desk, leans his head down towards David's and smirks. David calmly looks over the page. "It's a voided contract," David shrugs.

"Not just any contract."

"Standard and perpetuity . . . " David notes as he reads the fine print. Then he looks surprised. Clayton laughs.

"I take it they haven't sent you the memo yet," Clay crows.

"This is new. But why is it News?"

"Lindsey MacDonald's a free agent! The other side picked up his option. When was the last time that happened?"

"Don't know, don't care," David says as he hands the contract back to Clay. "He's a non-entity. A has-been. Why are you so obsessed with him?"

"He has . . . ambiguity. That's a rare quality in our world."

"He can go both ways. Whoop-dee-doo."

"Do you know what the other side values? The currency the Forces of Good' prize above all else?"

"Virtue?"

"Suffering! That's why they picked him. Sometime in the past few hours he showed a willingness to suffer. But the pain's just starting. Now that he's actually a member of the club, the pain's just gonna start raining down, like a cloud following him wherever he goes. The only way to get to Heaven is to live through Hell on Earth."

"Doesn't make him a player. He's still powerless. Which means I shouldn't waste my time talking about him." David ponders the news. "Is this connected to Sunnydale?"

"You didn't know he was plowing Faith?"

"Into Slayers. Freak," David says with hypocritical sarcasm, given his own predilection for Vengeance Demons.

"Great stuff this morning. I'm sure you were delighted when it came over the wire."

"Delighted? Please. The wrong Slayer died. The wrong vampire died. Spike could have been useful."

"To pester Angel? Possibly. But he would never work for us. We can't give him what he wants. As for Faith, she was a little too simple for my tastes. Buffy, she has nuance," Clay says with a smile.

"And, if you ever try to tell her how big a fan you are, she could kill you with her bare hands."

"You say that like it's a turn-on."

"Isn't it?"

"A grizzly bear can also kill me with its bare hands. I'm not attracted to them."

"I take it that means you don't want to request any dates with the new girls," David jokes. He knows Clay's almost sickeningly devoted to his girlfriend Mona.

"You're already on that? How many?"

"None. Other than the five who were there. Those Reapers were very thorough. But new ones should start trickling out any day now."

"How are you finding them?"

"A few undisclosed ladies at an undisclosed location. Far away from Los Angeles."

"Which happily makes it none of my business." Clayton walks towards the door. David stands up.

"What do you mean by that?" Creating an army of Rogue Slayers was a dream assignment. Clayton should be jealous of him.

Clay turns around to look at David. "What I meant was, I'm glad Buffy's not going to be coming after me. Good day." He leaves and closes the door. David sits down and grins.

"But plenty of other people will be."