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"The explosion was unbelievable." Alex reported dutifully to her parents, "There's nothing left of the Tower but a big, lumpy mess."
The squadrons had returned less than an hour ago and the news was spreading fast. There was no need, however. A person only had to look skyward to know what had happened.
She tilted her head back and looked up into the newly clear night sky. There were so many stars, more than she had ever imagined possible. She would always love the stars because her father had made them his gift to her.
"I'll never forget how brave they were." Alex added sadly, "But I felt the heat of the blast from over five miles away. There's no way there were survivors."
Cole stood behind her and awkwardly attempted to put his arms around her in a comforting embrace. To his surprise, she accepted the contact and leaned back against him.
"He finally redeemed himself." Oz smiled bittersweetly, "I always knew that someday he'd come back."
Willow curled happily against his side and he wrapped a thick arm around both her and Darlene, taking comfort in the company of his family.
"With the smog lifted, transmissions are starting to come in from all over." Angel sat across from Alex in a metal wheelchair with his hands folded in his lap, the soft surface breeze ruffling his short, dark hair. His skin was reddened and puckered with mild burn marks, but, overall, he was in good health. They had found him sealed inside one of the storage containers on the lower level, buried under the protection of hundreds of feet of industrial tubing. A few bandages and a liberal application of healing salve provided by Willow and he would be back on his feet within a few weeks. "They say the Hellspires are rotting away and demons are falling by the hundreds. The war is over."
Angel's face clouded over and he rubbed the back of his neck uneasily, looking up at Alex with regret in his eyes. The destruction of the Hellmouth seemed to have lifted his usually stern demeanor. He spoke to her now with a note of compassion in his voice.
"Alex," he began softly, "I'm sorry. Someone should have told you who he was before . . ."
"I know." She smiled softly to herself, her hands laid over Cole's and her eyes turned skyward, "I figured it out for myself. But I'm not sad now that he's gone. Somehow, I can tell that wherever he is, he's okay." She watched as a small point of red light twinkled in the sky and her green eyes became misty, "I just know it."
Everything had gone dark and he felt like he was falling. The sensation rushed over him in dizzying waves and he tried to scream, but no sound escaped his throat.
And then, all of a sudden, he WAS screaming. He was standing in the office of Mayor Richard Wilkins and his arm was broken. The tentacled Kevares demon thrashed and writhed on the threshold of a portal to the demon dimension, in the midst of its death throes. His father, caught in the convulsing grip of one of the creature's sprawling limbs, was being dragged screaming across the floor, steadily closer to the yawning portal to Hell. He was too far away for Gabriel to reach, but overhead, the Sword of Seals jutted from the forehead of the dying demon. If he leaped with all his strength, reached with all his power, he might be able to retrieve it . . .No, he had been given this choice before and he had chosen wrong. He'd had no idea of the consequences. Not this time.
He had no option but to watch as his father continued to scream as he was dragged through the swirling, mystical gateway. The sound of his cries was cut short, swallowed by the portal. Gabriel watched through pain-blurred vision as the Sword of Seals glowed hotly, spraying a shower of sparks in all directions as it, too, crossed through the portal. The rift collapsed in on itself with a wispy pop and then the room was silent. Gabriel stood as still as stone, paralyzed with shock, hot tears crawling slowly down his cheeks.
"Sometimes what someone wants to do and what someone needs to do aren't the same thing." He whispered, too low for anyone else to hear.
A new wave of sickness washed over him and he felt like he was falling again. Jamming his eyes shut, he gritted his jaw against the strain.
"You live too much in yesterday. You would do better to think about tomorrow." The old troupe mother shifted stiffly in her huge wicker chair and handed him a cup and a saucer from the stand next to her. "Here, a cup of tea will help calm you."
"W-What?" Gabriel stammered, blinking his eyes and looking around in confusion.
He was back in the gypsy camp, sitting before the troupe mother, about to undergo the tempus enchantment and change the future. He was home, he realized, back in nineteen ninety-nine feeling like he had just awoken from a long, vivid dream.
His wounds had disappeared as if they had never been, but his ears still rang with the death cries of a dozen demons and he was sure he could still smell the scent of gunpowder faintly in the air. It hadn't been a dream. It couldn't have been.
"Tea, my dear boy." She repeated, rattling the cup close to his face.
"Oh, yes, thank you." He accepted the cup gratefully and took a sip to steady himself.
"Are you sure you want to do this, young man? It is a very serious undertaking." The old woman watched him carefully, reading him with her jet black eyes.
"No." He answered, rising slowly to his feet. "No. I should leave, now."
"Are you feeling well?" she asked as he stumbled weakly for the door.
"I'm fine." He said, pushing out through the motor home's aluminum-plated door and into the open and breathing deeply of the clean, cool air. He looked up into the sky and noted Venus's glittering red light with a wistful tear in his eye. "I think I feel better now than I ever have."