Angel storms into the former church, slamming himself into the Lorophage and managing to interrupt the treatment, the demon releasing it’s grip on Faith, it’s needle-like pins withdrawing from the Slayer’s forehead. He shouts at Faith, telling her not to have the treatment.

Faith is on the floor, one arm propping her up and the other on her forehead. She’s dazed, her tears still streaming down her face. He puts his hand on her shoulder, gently, but with his commanding and familiar presence reaching through to her.

“You’re not that person anymore. You don’t run away from things. Don’t let your father do that to you. I know you’re hurting. I know it feels like too much to bear. But you can. You have to.” Faith looks down at her hands, not saying anything, still coming out of her daze. Behind her, Drusilla is helping the Lorophage, who’s recovering from the forced broken contact. “Actually, in point of fact… she doesn’t,” Dru tells her sire. “You’re the one who enjoys torturing himself Angel. She’s under no obligation to do the same.”

She turns to Faith, coddling her. “Tell him, dear. Tell him how you feel now that the trauma’s been removed.”

Faith is still looking at her hands, but she’s heard everything. Her voice quivers for a moment, as if she’s searching inside herself for something that should be there but isn’t. “I… feel…” Though the tears keep streaming, this time they’re not filled with the saltiness of fear or sadness or self-loathing. It’s joy, surprise and bliss.

“I feel great,” she says, a big smile gradually forming on her lips. She presses her hands to her chest. She turns to Angel and her voice has a quiet tone, one that Angel has never quite heard before. It sounds like peace. There’s no anger. No pain. “I mean, I remember it all, my Dad, the Mayor, everything they did to me. But I don’t care.”

That familiar feeling, the one she’s always had about desperately needing a family, or the thoughts that she deserved to be unhappy… All the hurt. It’s gone. It’s gone, she says.

Angel extends his hand to help the Slayer to her feet. As she rises, however, he asks her a question: “What else is gone?” He asks her how she feels about the fact that a few years back she killed an innocent man. “Five by five?” he challenges.

“The memories of what I’ve done are agony. The weight’s like a physical thing, crushing me, and keeping me from doing it again.” He holds his fist to his bare chest. “If there is some part of Angelus in me, this is what keeps him locked away.” Putting both hands on either side of Faith, as if to shake her, Angel looks directly into the Slayer’s dark brown eyes. “It’s what pushes me to do whatever I can to atone. That kind of pain’s not a traffic ticket. It’s not something you try to get out of. It’s what you fight through so you can come out stronger.” Drusilla stands behind him, teeth clenched together, intense look of anger glaring at Angel.

He pulls Faith closer to his face, right into his space. “This shortcut you took didn’t make you better. It made you less.”

His voice is softer now. “The woman who came to LA and tortured Wesley, who tried to get me to kill her… that desperate, broken girl… that’s who I’d expect to give up like this. Not you.” Angel doesn’t even try to hide the disappointment in his voice. He has to get through to her.

Drusilla gets between the two of them as she pushes Angel aside. “We’re all quite aware how you feel,” she tells him. But’s it’s not always about him. They don’t all have the same capacity for self-hatred that he does. But there’s an even bigger issue, Dru tells him, turning to Faith, as if waiting for confirmation. Faith looks up at Angel, Drusilla’s hand now resting on her arm, in the same place Angel’s was less than a minute before. “It’s too late,” Faith nods, dried blood and tears making marks on her face. “Even if I wanted to, I can’t undo it.”

Angel starts to get annoyed. He points at the Lorophage, snarling in Drusilla’s direction: “Could he?” he shouts.

Drusilla waves her hands, as if shooing an insect away. “Now you’re being ridiculous. He’s a Lorophage demon. They feed on trauma. They don’t give it back.” Angel raises his sword slightly, asking Dru if the demon could – if she wanted him to? Drusilla’s face changes, growing stern, the smile disappearing from view.

Without warning, she dives at Angel. “That’s quite enough of that sort of talk,” she snarls, easily evading Angel’s sword and arching herself backwards. She picks up a candelabra, swinging it around at her sire, his sword slicing the trail of her gown. “You want everyone to be like you. A shattered helpless thing!” She manages to disarm Angel, driving him towards her throne. Her nails scratch straight across Angel’s stomach, drawing blood. “I will never be that again! None of us will.”

Angel reacts, diving out of her way as Dru strikes again, but this time the throne crumbles around her, reduced to splinters. Angel growls at her. “They already are. You just broke them in different ways.”

He’s silenced by the Lorophage, who punches him across the face, startling him enough to allow Dru’s followers to grab a hold of him. Faith yells for them to let Angel go, and Drusilla sing-songs back at her. “Not to fear little one. We won’t hurt him. We’re just going to fix him. Make him like you.” The Lorophage comes towards Dru, needle fingers flexing. “Won’t that be nice? His burdens lifted, his guilt gone? Little Angel, happy at last?”

As Faith looks on, shaking slightly, the Lorophage prepares to start his treatment on Angel. He looks at Dru and reminds her that she said that this was supposed to be a choice. Drusilla sniggers. “Yes, well, you made the wrong one.” As the needles begin to enter through his skin, making their way into his skull, he whispers Faith’s name, looking right at her. “I can’t fight them all.”

Drusilla looks at Faith, telling her not to trust Angel’s words: “He’s not right in the head. Trust me, I know.” She smiles at her, as she cradles the writhing Angel in her arms. For a moment, all is quiet. Drusilla says it’s all for the best – Angel would only torture himself for eternity. “Just another moment,” she declares, and her sire will be “right as rain.” Faith turns her back, unwilling to watch. There’s a good girl, is Dru’s eerie response.

At that moment, Angel screams in pain. Faith puts her hands to her ears to block out his cries. Drusilla cradles him from behind on the floor, telling him to let go, so they can all be a happy family.

Just as she finishes speaking, she’s staggered by a boot to the back of the head. Faith moves into action, sword in her hands. She doesn’t say a word as the Lorophage takes his appendages from Angel’s head. Drusilla’s face turns to her demonic visage instantly, snarling at Faith, all hint of the calmness gone. “Ungrateful wretch,” she screams, as she tries to catch Faith with her long finger nails. “After all I’ve done for you!” Faith flips away from her towards Angel, who’s getting to his feet.

“You used me. Like my Dad. Like everyone,” Faith says defiantly.

Then she stands back-to-back with Angel, weapons in hand. “Almost everyone.”

As Angel readies to battle the Lorophage, Drusilla is intent on fighting Faith, screeching and ranting about her betrayal. The sanity is still there, but by now there’s more and more of the erratic Drusilla coming out. Like she can’t hold up the act anymore. “I made you better, I made everyone better! Angel saved me from a meaningless life. A meaningless death. I would have ended up a withered old nun, locked away from the world. Instead, it’s my oyster, a banquet, with me the guest of honour for all eternity!”

As she claims that Angel made her something beautiful, Faith avoids another slice from those deadly nails. “I owe him this,” Drusilla pleads, stating that she won’t give up. “Not until I’ve saved him the way he saved me.” As the followers in the night club look on at the battle, the Lorophage, once again, closes in on Angel’s brain. He looks at the Lorophage and, with a feeling of immense guilt, tells Drusilla that he’s sorry, before he twists the Lorophage’s fingers around and plunges them into it’s own forehead. As the demon screams and makes a hideous sound, Angel allows it to fall to the ground.

As the demon hits the floor, smoke and steam start to coalesce around him, a pale orange colour. Drusilla doesn’t know what’s happening, but then the same coloured fog comes away from the followers and her body as well. Angel tells her that the Lorophage is doing exactly what it was trying to do: it tried to take his trauma. Instead, with the claws turned on him, he’s drawing on his own, and every piece of trauma the demon had, came from others.

Drusilla shrieks in horror as she realises this will bring her trauma back. She screams at Angel, begging him not to do this. Not to her. Not again. “It’s coming, can’t you see? Something’s creeping it’s way in! To you and to me!” She’s hanging from Angel’s open shirt now, pleading with him, almost begging. She’s starting to sob uncontrollably. Angel looks at her, sadness all over his face. She pulls herself close to him, her voice now almost a whisper. “Don’t do this to me, Angel,” Drusilla begs. “Not again.”

As the steam dissipates in the room, Angel turns away from Drusilla, who’s in front of him, crumpled at his feet. He can’t look at her. “You don’t know what it’s like, thoughts writhing like eels, my whole world so…” she looks up at Angel, the tears still streaming, but a big wide grin on her face, “Lovely,” she finishes. She even looks delusional now. She hugs Angel, as Faith wraps her arms around her own waist, reeling from the experience. “Oh, Angel,” Drusilla purrs in his arms. “I knew you would save me.”

She stands to make a speech, standing on the stage, talking to her followers, her words nonsense. Angel reaches out for Faith, sitting on the side of the stage. He’s about to ask her how she is, when she swipes around and slaps him away from her. “Don’t touch me,” she tells him, tears in her eyes again.

He says sorry for reversing the treatment. He knew she’d regret it. She turns to him, anger in her eyes. “I know, now back off. Sometimes I just need you to leave me the Hell alone!” It’s not meant as a yell, but it becomes one by the time she finishes speaking. She stops and just looks at the floor in silence.

The followers behind them, vampire and human alike, are starting to clear from their trauma-free existence. All the pain and hurt returns to them. They’re horrified, instantly blaming Angel and Faith for their returned emotions. They surround the two, like an unruly mob, but Angel and Faith manage to stumble their way through the crowd without hurting them. When Angel gets to Drusilla, he tells her that she can call them off, and that he can still help her. She laughs. “There’s not enough help for you. Now I’m myself again, I’ve skipped ahead in the book. And oh, the awful pictures…” She stops, sudden sadness on her face. “It’s coming, you see. For the both of us.” She tells Angel that the pieces have come together in his heart, but they’re all “cutting each other, like shards of glass.” She tells him that ghosts from his past will soon come to visit again. Hers will too, she claims.

She opens the door to the church, still ranting, still raving. “It’s time to go, Angel. I am gone. I can’t help you now.” She runs out of the former church into the dark night. “It’s all torn apart. We’re all torn apart. In the end, we are alone.” And with that, Drusilla is gone once more.

After some struggling, Angel and Faith finally manage to get through the followers and out onto the rooftops. The followers still prowl out of the church, looking for them. Angel regrets that Drusilla is out there, now insane again. Faith assures him that she’ll put out some feelers: Drusilla will turn up. Faith turns to him and tells him that Drusilla will never be like him, or even Spike. “Some people you just gotta write off.” Angel looks at her. He can see the guilt in her eyes.

“Going to Drusilla, that wasn’t you, Faith. It was seeing your father. What he did to you. Sometimes when you see someone from the past, it takes you right back. You slip into old patterns,” he tells her. She stands next to him now, overlooking London. “Like nothing’s changed,” she says, sadly. He starts to make another speech about atonement and redemption, but Faith, with a somewhat angry tone, tells him that she gets it! Instead, she wants to know which part of Giles’ soul he got this time. “Was it the traumatised teenager?”

Angel looks at her, stunned. “What?” Faith smiles. “Come on. I’m uneducated, not stupid. All of a sudden you get a piercing?” Angel hurries to close his shirt, self conscious about his exposed chest for a moment. Faith continues to tease. She’s noticed it more than once during their battles.

Angel, holding his shirt closed, admits that yes, he has a magical artifact in his nipple piercing. It’s called the Tooth of Ammut. “The ancient Egyptians believed there are nine parts of the soul. I’m not sure the number’s exactly right, but yeah, I’m collecting them all. I wasn’t sure what you’d think. I know you don’t believe I can bring him back.”

Faith sits down on the roof top’s edge next to him. “I’m not sure what I believe any more, but I’ll tell you what I know. You don’t give up on people. And you’re right. I don’t either. So let’s do this thing. I’m in.”

Angel is surprised, but glad. She asks him if there’s any other little secrets she should know before she jumps in and he tells her that she’s now up to speed. As they head to the street below, Faith grabs a hold of his arm. “Hold on. What I said about us not giving up… I didn’t mean Drusilla. Soulless, I can work with. Crazy, I can work with… but soulless and crazy, that’s a bridge too far.”

Angel knows there’s no easy fix. And he agrees with Faith that Drusilla is a mess. As they walk away, he begins to tell Faith a story. “But before she met me, she was beautiful…”

And as the last of the Lorophage energy fades away around the alley way, a brief image flickers through it and into the night… an image of a happy, Catholic girl named Drusilla… before the darkness came for her.