Airdate: October 27th, 2002

Special Guest Star: Andy Hallett
Guest Starring: Stephanie Romanov

Written by: Jeffrey Bell
Directed by: Skip Schoolnik


Teaser

A family’s (mom, dad, teen boy) SUV has broken down in the seedy and empty part of town. Connor checks up on them, but appears intimidating and disappears when the tow truck arrives. But the truck has two vamps in them and one starts beating up the dad, the other dragging the mother out by the car window when Connor dusts that one and pushes in the cigarette lighter. Connor gets the second vamp off the father, hits him with a gas can from the truck that spills on the vamp, the jumps out of sight. When that vamp goes for the dad again, Connor tosses him the lighter; the vamp grabs it, ignites and dusts. The father is too dazed to say anything and just goes with his family.

Connor breaks into the Hyperion, sneaking around, just as the gang finds Cordy in the lobby. Connor watches that from above as Cordy ask the returning Angel, Fred and Gunn who they are. Angel goes to Cordy, happy she’s back, but he steps away. She doesn’t remember any of them; Angel introduces himself, Gunn and Fred; they’re her friends. Cordy asks Angel if they know each other, he says they do, very well. She asks then who she is.

ACT I

Cordy only remembers things like numbers, animals, flossing, but nothing pertaining to herself. Angel says she’s Cordelia Chase: she works here with them, she’s been gone for a while but she’s safe now. She doesn’t remember being gone, Angel says what important is that she’s back. Connor, still upstairs, has seen enough and leaves; Cordy catches a glimpse of him. Fred thinks Cordy’s got a form of amnesia, Gunn whispers that they ought to take her to a hospital but Cordy heard that and refuses to go. Angle sees Lorne approaching the front door and has Gunn intercept him before he comes in, and confers with Fred in his office, leaving Cordy alone in the lobby. In the office, Angel says to Fred that he doesn’t want Cordy to freak, her wants her to remember who he is before he brings up the vampire and demons part. Fred wonders why Cordy’s back, Angel didn’t even think of that, he was just so happy that she was. They notice Cordy looking in, and wave, which creeps Cordy out, she sees a blade on the floor, that doesn’t help either. They come back out of the office and the phone rings; Cordy’s slowly backing away. Angel says she doesn’t have to be afraid, but she doesn’t know them, or the hotel. The machine picks up the message, it’s Cordy’s recorded voice on it and that she recognizes, so she must have worked there. Fred picks up the phone when the client starts talking about his demon problem, and she assures the client they’ll be right there. She just says to Fred that it’s an ugly divorce case (hence “demon”), they’re P.I.s, and says she has to take care of it with Gunn. When Cordy looks at Angel she does the demonic pregnancy sign and goes out. Angel meanwhile helps Cordy settle in, but she’s dubious, she wants to go home. Angel shows her to a room where they stored all her stuff from the apartment. She picks up a shoe, the one she wore to the ballet. He says they all went, but it was special and they had a good time, he thought she might remember, she wishes she could. He wants to help her get her memories back, she agrees, but not tonight, he leaves, stating that she is among friends.

A little while later she’s out of the white robe and in the some older clothes, practicing saying her name in front of the mirror. She then starts flipping through the Sunnydale Yearbook, not surprised to be popular. But the yearbook signatures puzzle her like “We had fun in homeroom, too bad it burned down” and “what about that giant snake?” she moves on to the phones and finds one of her, Angel, and baby Connor. After that she starts wandering the hotel corridors and hears someone singing nearby. She eavesdrops but Lorne stops when he hears something, she’s not there of course after he’s checked. Lorne tries to finish counselling a demon in human form.

Cordy walks tentatively to the lobby, asking out loud if anyone’s there, causing Angel to rush out with his bottles of blood before she sees him. She arrives in the empty lobby but still finds a drop of blood on the counter, and hides behind it when she hears Gunn and Fred come in. they’re complaining about not killing those babies fast enough and that they’d do that kind of work for free. Gunn drops the bloody axe on the counter, a drop of which hits Cordy and she bolts up and stumbles onto the weapon cabinet, weapons hitting the floor. She runs out, Angel grabs her, he can explain, and she runs to the garden. There she’s attacked my two masked men, but kicks the ass of one while Angel takes care of the other. Angel explains to her that those goons were lawyers from Wolfram & Hart and they must know she’s back. He thinks she ought to stay in the hotel, where it’s safe. She’s incredulous: Gunn and Fred were talking about murdering children, pointy weapons, and bad singing. Angel says that as odd as it may seem, the Cordelia they know is at home here, he has her look in his heart, she’s safe and among friends. After a beat, she believes him

Back in her room with Angel, she asks if she was a mom and shows him a picture of baby Connor. He explains that it’s his son, but she’s not the mother and they weren’t together, not exactly. She asks if she was a nun then and gives him some necklaces with crosses on them, he growls and vamps out. She screams.

ACT II

Cordy runs out of her room, into the lobby and straight into Lorne. They scream and Angel gets her off Lorne, Gunn and Fred come in. she wants answers now. Angel says they were afraid the truth would scare her but decide to tell her everything.

A bit later, they’ve told her all there is to know, it all makes sense to her now, a world where demons are real and given her life up to that point, who’d want to remember? Angel says there’s a way to solve this: she has to sing a song to Lorne, he’ll be able to see her future and it might explain what happened and how to get her memories back. She starts to sing, Lorne is uneasy, and not because of her tone-deaf singing. He has her stop, stammers about things being great and steps out; Angel goes after him. She snorts derisively: they aren’t good liars. She goes to find Angel, alone she insists to Gunn and Fred.

Angel knocks on Lorne’s locked door, he wants to know what he saw, if it’s that bad, he needs to know. Lorne opens the door “it’s that bad.” Angel needs details; Lorne says he has none, just a body-full of symptoms of queasiness. Angel needs more, Lorne refers him to “Slouching Towards Bethlehem”: despair, torment, and terror. He saw pieces, flashes, and jumbles of it: Evil’s coming and it’s planning on staying.

Wes’s Apartment. Lilah and Wes are cuddling in bed; she informs him that the firm knows what they’re doing. Wes says that it’s they’re job to know the sordid details of their employees’ lives. She says Angel knows too, Wes doesn’t work for him anymore and couldn’t care less of what Angel thinks of their relationship. She’s happy now, he called it a relationship first, he owes her a dollar and she wants him to sign it, as proof of what they have right now. He gets out the bill.

Cordy’s walking around the shabbier parts of the hotel, hearing noises, it’s the man from earlier, he says she smells good and opens his mouth from four corners (think “Predator”). Elsewhere in the hotel, Angel’s spidey senses are tingling; he hears the creature’s snarl.

Cordy’s running down to the lobby again, the demon jumps off from the railing, right in front of her, mouth still open: he wants a snack. Connor, out of nowhere, jumps on him and throws him aside. He says to her that she’s not safe here, she asks him to take her out of there. He stakes the demon, and leads her out.

ACT III

Angel, Gunn and Fred are standing over the body of the demon, Angel wondering how they could have her wandering alone: this could be the start of the slouching; what if there were hundreds of these things? Fred asks him if there’s something he’s not telling them and Lorne comes in and explains that there is something, but that’s not it, that’s just a client with a habit of snacking on humans. What he saw in Cordy’s vision, that’s why he ran out, with mayhem similar to the Book of Revelations, and what he got from Cordy was dense, like an onion: each layer a pain. Angel says they have to find Cordy: she’s alone, terrified and amnesiac.

At a factory, she asks what he was doing at the hotel, he says he saw she was back and while they weren’t friends before she was nice to him once. He tells her his name, and she realizes that he’s Angel’s son. They climb up to the space he made his home. She asks why he doesn’t live with his father, he tells her the short version: sinking Angel to the bottom of the ocean and putting a knife to her throat. He’s sorry, eh was new to the world. She thanks him for telling her the truth, it means a lot to her.

Wes’s bed. Lilah picks up a call on her cell and steps out, Wes awakens and listens to her side of the conversation. He picks up the parts about Cordy’s return and her staying at Connors, she has them put out an extraction team and she’s on her way. Wes does the show of waking up when she gets dressed, she has to go but he should go back to sleep she says. She picks up her purse, knocking the signed dollar bill to the floor.

At Connor’s place, Cordy tries to sleep but can’t, he’s locking the door. She’s scared, trying to remember little things, but can’t, it’s just empty and makes her feel lonely, she cries a bit. He says she likes shoes, doughnuts, and she’s very brave. She stops crying, she asks when was she brave, he says tonight she’s lost everything but she’s still strong. She has a feeling something very bad is going to happen but she doesn’t remember it and doesn’t know what to do, or who to trust, except him. She doesn’t know why but she trusts him, she has the feeling he lost everything too. He walks away, saying he has nothing to lose. She asks him not to go too far.

Angel’s just come back from searching while Gunn and Fred have been thinking of where she might be, and found nothing. They should widen the search and include hospitals and police stations; someone has to know where she is. Wesley comes in, he knows where she is and it’s careless of them to misplace her after all the effort made to find her. Angel tells him she just showed up with no memories of them or her, Wes admires that she got a clean slate. He informs them that W&H are planning to extract her, she may have spent some time with the PTBs, W&H will consider her valuable and her doubts Connor will be able to stop them. Angel asks if Wes has that on good authority, he says that Angel doesn’t sound too concerned. Angel is sure his son has taken excellent care of her.

Connor’s sleeping next to Cordy, hand on her breast, when she turns around and he covers her mouth: someone’s here. A goon dressed in commando getup walks in and trips one of Connor’s traps, a rope pulling him upside down. Connor knocks him out with a 2x4. He’s set traps but Cordy will have to fight, he hopes she remembers and throws her a sword. A goon smashes through the window with a machete, there’s only one way to find out.

ACT IV

Two more goons smash through as Cordy disposes of the first one, the second one hits a booby traps and a knife hits his leg. More come in, Connor and Cordy keep fighting. One sets up a remote video link so that Lilah can watch from the roof. Cordy gets hit and Connor pinned down when Angel, Gunn and Fred come in, Angel taking aside the unconscious Cordy. Lilah watches, satisfied, a commando leader tells her it’s done, and has the team pull out. Angel helps Cordelia up and appreciates Connor’s effort. Connor wasn’t expecting so many, but Cordy sys she’s still not going home, she’s staying with Connor. She needs someone who won’t lie to her, she knows they were trying to help, but the truth is the only way to do that, and that’s what Connor has given her. Angel and the others leave, Angel asks his son to keep her safe

Wes is up at home, drinking alone, when he finds the signed dollar bill. He comes to a realization.

Angel, Gunn and Fred come back to the hotel, Fred thinks Cordy’s just confused, they have to give her time. They hear a sound from the office and rush there: Lorne is bound and gagged with a nasty wound on his forehead. They untie him, this was W&H’s doing. They weren’t after Cordy, they must have know Lorne would read her and set up that decoy, they were after what Lorne saw. Lorne says they sucked it out of his head, they got a demon when he wouldn’t talk, and it burrowed in: they got all of it. Angel doesn’t know who tricked them though, W&H, or Wesley, but now the firm may know more about Cordy’s doom and gloom than they do, and that’s a problem.

Wes drops by Lilah’s apartment; she wonders what took him so long. He says she played him; she wanted him to hear her conversation. She says he played himself, she was doing her job, he decided to take what he overheard and give it to Team Angel, so he should figure out who’s he’s mad at before he goes all righteous fury on her. That deflates him, he asks what was the plan, she tells him she could have had Lorne’s brain in a jar but kept it in his head. Is that supposed to lull him into trusting her again? She says that if she thought he trusted her, she never would have played him like that. He says, “It’s never simple is it?”

Connor watches Cordy sleeping from a distance while also keeping guard, while Angel looks over her empty bed, saddened.


Summary by Dannyboy