A house in London, England, quite some time ago. A woman is shrieking in horror at a loved one: her daughter Hannah. The child is floating, mid-air, a spate of tentacles coming from her mouth, with a hissing creature at the end of each one. Each tentacle throws blasts towards her mother, who’s still screeching at her to stop.

In front of her stands Rupert Giles. He chants a spell, hoping that Anne, the woman who cowers behind him, won’t notice that his proficiency with magic clearly isn’t what it used to be. He grabs Anne and tackles her through into the nearest room: his spell had no effect.

The demon wails through the closed door that it’s hungry. Anne reaches for her daughter, but Giles reiterates what he’s already told her: that is not your daughter. Anne is convinced that there must be something of her Hannah inside – and she’s begging Giles to help her, in anyway he can.

Giles agrees to do everything he can to save Hannah. He realises that some of his spell specifics were wrong and, correcting the problem with quick thinking, Giles says to Anne that he cannot banish the creature from Hannah, but can bind it and keep it contained until he can remove it permanently. Anne agrees: anything for her child.

Giles chants his spell anew, changing the incantation. The demon realises what he’s doing, using a tentacle to knock Giles’ tome from his hands, slicing at the Watcher’s throat! There’s a spray of blood, but Giles knows what he has to do: this demon requires a sacrifice and so he gives it one. He unleashes the last part of his spell, and the demon is bound, Hannah dropping to the floor lightly, restored to normal.

Giles has sacrificed one of his most cherished memories. That was the deal; the problem being that Giles can no longer remember which memory he’s forgotten. Anne helps him stop the bleeding on his throat. Giles tells her that he was lucky.

Before he leaves, Anne patches up his wounds, but Giles reminds her that the demon is not gone forever – it will return, stronger and angrier. Anne asks him to swear that when the time comes, he’ll return to help. Giles turns to her with a smile. He gives her his solemn promise: “You will not be forgotten.” Giles is aware that he may not always be around, so he records the event in his Watcher’s Diaries, so that one day, if he’s not around, the next generation of heroes will step in when needed and help Hannah when the time comes…

Now. Anne’s home. Hannah floats above the carpet once again, tentacles stronger and larger. They have Hannah’s latest protectors in it’s clutches: the vampire with a soul, named Angel, and the former rogue Vampire Slayer, Faith Lehane. Faith is convinced her partner has got this one. Angel is convinced that he hasn’t.

Faith swings her axe, dicing one of the tentacles, getting sprayed with green arterial goo. She doesn’t notice: she’s worried about Angel: So what if he spent the last few months staring at the wall? He’s a vampire with a soul. Breaks the rules by existing. If anyone can go from vegetable to badass overnight, it’s Angel. Right?

Angel’s thoughts are also busy, but he’s on a different wave length than the Slayer. He’s hesitant and, as the demon taunts him about his mission, Angel is aware that he might fail the child. The creature tells him that “your master was a mage, and he could not defeat me.”

Angel doesn’t think anymore. He just responds, flipping his way over to the tentacle as it chokes him. “Giles, my master?” he asks the demon. “I snapped his neck like a twig. Won’t go near as easy on you.” Instead of attacking the creatures’ limbs as they flail about around his head, Angel, vampire face ready, sinks his teeth into Hannah herself!

Anne screams in horror. Faith holds her back and tells her it’s okay, unsure if she’s telling the truth. The demon is dying, having been forced out of Hannah. It sits on the floor, it’s true form a writhing mass of eel like appendages. It tells Angel that he knows who he is. He knows the blood on his hands. And without this host, either he or ‘his Slayer cow’ will do as a replacement. Angel tells Anne to take Hannah and leave. Faith grabs her axe: things are about to get nasty.

Angel says the demon must have a brain, somewhere, but Faith has just decided to hack away until something gives. As she slices, a spray of goo hits Angel in his face.

As the demon dies, Angel goes quiet, Giles’ memory, the one he sacrificed, rushing through Angel’s mind… He sees images from Giles’ life in Sunnydale. His first date with Jenny Calendar. Their first kiss. Their first laugh together.

Faith shakes him out of the memory. “Did you get it?” she asks, referring to the memory. Angel, still flustered confirms that he did, but he didn’t realise that it would hit him so powerfully. Giles gave up his most cherished memory: his memory of the day he and Jenny fell in love. Faith asks who Jenny was, and Angel reminds her that she was Giles’ lover.

And he killed her. Or Angelus did. Angel doesn’t seem to see the distinction right this second: “I killed the woman he loved. He forgave me. And he paid the price.” He thinks back to the moment he killed Giles in Sunnydale, in the Chamber of the Seed of Wonder. Before Faith can make sure he’s okay, Anne and Hannah re-enter the room. She asks, tentatively: is the demon dead?

It is, Angel confirms, as he also apologises for the mess. Anne is more concerned, getting angry, that he bit her daughter! Angel explains that the demon would only leave Hannah if she was at risk, so he bit her, superficially, didn’t drain any blood, just enough to threaten the creature’s survival. He is sorry he didn’t tell her first. Faith jumps in to defend him, telling Anne she had it under control.

Anne buys this. Angel is not so sure. But she’s glad for their help. She should have known that Mr. Giles would have sent someone if he couldn’t make it personally. When she asks if Giles sent them, they lie and tell Anne yes.

On their way through the dark streets of London, Angel tells Faith that he felt uncomfortable lying about Giles. Faith claims it was the truth: in a way, Angel, feeling guilty about Giles and reading all his Watcher Diaries, led them to Anne and Hannah’s appointment and Angel, as soon as he saw it, went full blown ‘help the helpless’ and raced into action like a superhero! Besides, if she had told Anne that Giles had been killed by the guy standing in her front room, it would have ruined the whole celebratory-vibe, if he gets what she’s saying.

Faith is worried that he’s going to go backwards, back to silence, like he’s been the last few months, but he tells her he’ll be fine. He’s had his eyes opened, and he knows what he has to do. He tells her that he’s going home. She should go do what she wants. It’ll be good for her.

Elsewhere in the city, a young woman is walking the road home, checking her phone, and condemning the thugs who have knocked the street lights out. As she’s walking, she has the distinct feeling she’s being watched.

Suddenly, a figure jumps from the shadows above her, surprising the woman. She reaches into her bag, flips the assailant over her shoulder and pulls the stake from her bag in close. She’s a Vampire Slayer. She shouts at her attacker and, just an instant before the stake hits her opponent’s heart, it’s stopped by her attacker. It’s Faith. The Slayer, who’s named Nadira, stops immediately, withdrawing the stake. She tells Faith that sneaking up on her wasn’t very funny – she completed her training, so she doesn’t need to be kept sharp by the seniors. Faith says that Nadira is pretty sharp already, judging by her comments. Faith suggests they enter the nearest nightclub.

Inside, the music is loud, but not so loud that Nadira can’t hear what Faith is saying. As they sit at the bar, Faith asks her for the details of what happened. She knows that all the other Slayers in Nadira’s squad were killed, but Nadira is wound too tight and if she’s not careful, she’ll snap. Trust her, Faith says. She’s been there.

Nadira tells her that her Squad were training in the Azores, about thirty of them in total. They had bonded, become family. They would have died for each other. Nadira thinks she should have.

“I’d pulled guard duty,” she tells Faith. “It was my job to warn them, but I never saw it coming.” The Squad had been attacked by two demons with white skin, paler than death, demon energy at their command. They cut through the Slayers like paper. “They were having fun. The more of us they killed, the more excited they got. Actually seemed to shine brighter.”

She picks up another drink before knocking it back. She continues, her voice shaking. Not with fear, but with anger. Faith can see her clenching her fists in frustration. “They called each other Pearl and Nash. And there was someone with them, their boss. They were trying to impress him. Doing worse and worse things. He just floated there. Like it was nothing. They called him Twilight.”

Faith exhales slowly. Nadira now looks upset, all the colour drained from her face, almost appearing translucent in the strobe lighting. “I almost died. Willow found me. Healed me. I’ve learned to be grateful.”

Faith is in shock, speechless. She knew some of the details, but not the specifics. Twilight. Angel. She asks why Nadira didn’t tell her everything, but Nadira tells her that she’s heard all about Faith and her relationship or whatever with Buffy – she doesn’t know what’s true, but didn’t Faith try to kill her? Faith tells her it’s complicated, with a sigh, and looks back to her drink. Nadira has mixed feelings about Buffy too: she cut magic off, made certain no new Slayers can be called. She thinks they should leave Buffy where she is. She’s more interested in finding Angel, her bloke. Twilight.

She tells Faith that that is the only thing that keeps her going. Her anger seeps through again, into her voice, pulsating through her eyes. “I’m going to find the bastards who killed my sisters. I’m going to find Angel. And I am going to kill them all.” Faith stares at her as Nadira turns away, back to her drink, confident her intentions have been clear. Faith picks up her drink. “We all gotta dream,” she tells Nadira.

In a different bar, not that far away, Whistler stands behind the counter. He picks up a glass and starts to pour a beer. He tells his companions that when the big moments come, that’s when we find out who we are. And he maintains the balances. “But there ain’t much balance going around lately.”

He can’t contact the Powers That Be. His precognition powers are out of whack and only self-powered mystical stuff is currently working since the Seed of Wonder was destroyed. Of course, he says, this is all because Angel ditched the plan midway through. He’s trying to persuade his company to join him, because, right this second, the world is running around like a chicken with it’s head cut off, and what it needs is someone to save it. He knows that his guests have been down this road before, and he knows this isn’t going to be easy, but he needs to know: do his new friends have what it takes to go up against Angel?

A voice stops him, as a pale hand, smeared with freshly drawn blood, takes the pint from his hands. It’s Nash and his sister Pearl. They’ve killed the staff and patrons of the bar in a horrific manner, bodies and blood strewn everywhere. “Bring in the next stage of evolution and get payback on our old boss?” Nash asks. Pearl drawls seductively towards them. “Someone’s been peeking at our dream board…” she smiles.

In Giles’ former apartment, now Faith’s, Angel is sitting down. “What do you want me to say, Faith?” She’s questioning him about Nadira’s story. She was hoping it would turn out to be an illusion, or even a cosplayer Twilight twin, but more than that, she simply wants him to say it wasn’t him. He looks down at the floor: he can’t.

“Nash and Pearl, they’re crazy. But strong. They feed of primal emotions: fear, lust, death – it charges them up. Their mother bred with a demon – on purpose – told them they were the future, the Adam and Eve of a new stage in evolution. And they worshipped Twilight like a God.” Angel, as Twilight, told them that by helping him, they would achieve their destiny. Faith rolls her eyes: none of the Twilight stuff makes sense to her, but Angel tells her that if she had seen the things he had seen, it would.

He tells her about Los Angeles when it went to Hell. The pain. The loss. The emotion. The things said that they couldn’t take back as easily as time. The memories of Hell A. He has a memory of that and he wouldn’t wish it on anyone. And he was told, or Twilight was told, that if he didn’t do what was needed, what happened to Los Angeles would happen again, but to the whole world.

So he worked with bad guys. He tried to send Pearl and Nash after non-human targets, but he knew that they would, at some point, break the rules. He doesn’t remember Nadira or her Squad, but there were times, towards the end, when he was more Twilight than Angel: he has vague memories and doesn’t know what happened then. Faith asks him if that was what it was like when he killed Giles: Twilight, not Angel?

Angel can’t say that, however. He wishes he could. He could have turned back, or asked more questions or really thought about the consequences, but he didn’t – and now he has more blood on his conscience than Angelus ever did.

Faith tells her that she’s going to carry on in Giles name, and is okay if Angel wants to continue. But she also wants to help the Slayers who are now mentor-less and she’s all for going through Giles’ diaries and finding people to help. But she asks him, gently, to let go slightly, because all this obsessing with Giles’ life is not going to help them. After all, she says, Angel cannot simply replace Giles.

Angel looks at her, suddenly deadly serious. “Take his place? I could never take his place.”

He looks at Faith, a smile on his face. He looks at her stunned face as he tells her his plan: “I’m going to bring Giles back to life.”