Underneath
Harmony: I called everyone. They're just...
Angel: Not here. I can see that. If they were here, I wouldn't be alone. Why am I alone?
Harmony: Well, you can be super grouchy.
Harmony: Everyone's otherwise occupado, boss. Wesley's stuck baby-sitting miss 'I used to rule the world, bow down before me, minion scum.' Why aren't we killing her, again?
Angel: Gunn:
Harmony: Maybe... if we had a really big one.
Angel: Where is Gunn?
Harmony: Oh. The hospital still. You know, from when Wesley... and Lorne's kinda MIA since...
Angle: Fred.
Harmony: Okey-dokey then.
Spike: My first official parley as a very loose affiliated member of the... what are we? Tell me we're not Scoobies.
Angel: We don't have a...
Spike: A name? Well, that's probably for the best. You'd want to be 'Angel's Avengers' or something.
Angel: 'Angel's Avengers', that's...
Spike: What? I'm listening. With beer.
Angel: Forget it. You know what? This isn't a meeting. This is you being annoying.
Spike: Why am I always reconnaissance? I should get a decently flash gig like 'save the girl' or 'steal the emerald with the girl'.
Angel: Handsome man, save me from the monsters.
Spike: Exactly! Or-What's that now?
Angel: That's the first thing Fred said to me. In Pylea. She was trapped, hiding, afraid. Neary crazy. Crazy. But brave. I should never have let her come here. Bad things always happen here.
Spike: Hate to break it to you, mate, but bad things always happen everywhere.
Spike: Bugger. You're fixing to do something stupid, aren't you?
Angel: Done it. Came here. Spend everyday lying to myself about making the world a better place.
Spike: Welcome to the planet. We all paint on your happy faces everyday, when all we really wanted is to pound the neighbor's missis, steal his Ben Franklins, and while we're at it, not thinking about the third of the world that's starving to death.
Angel: I'm not saying that I can fix everything. I just-I... I have to do better.
Spike: Rat? Snake? Beady little rat snake?
Lorne: More sea, less breeze, huh?
Lorne: What do I think? I think I'm tired. I think I'm sick and tired of wearing bells on my toes and making like everything's gonna be okay. I think it's pathetic that lately I'm too scared and sad to tell people the truth so I just say what they wanna hear instead. Most of all, I think the term just say what they wanna hear instead. Most of all, I think the term 'Happy Hour' should be banned from the English language. There's nothing happy about this hour or any other.
Bartender: Oh.
Lorne: What I know is I started drinking the moment that I found out that a girl I loved was gonna die. Every time I get to the bottom of the glass, I hope that the last drop is gonna take me the distance.
Bartender: Okay.
Lorne: A simple plan that failed utterly, which is why I'm gonna heave my tuchis off this stool, strap the bells on, and with a smile and a quip, go back into the belly of a very ugly beast and pretend like I can help. Hmmm. Cause that's what the green guy does.
Angel: Gunn, you paid a high price for what's in that brain, so use it.
Angel: Listen, Gunn... I know you feel bad about your part in what happened to Fred. And you should. For the rest of your life, it should wake you up in the middle of the night. And it will... because you're a good man. You signed a piece of paper, that's all.
Gunn: But I knew. Not about Fred, but... when I signed, I knew there would be consequences.
Angel: You know, the thing about atonement is, you never run out of chances... but you gotta take em. You can't hide in some hospital room and pretend it's all gonna go away... cause it never will.
Fred: This is only the first layer. Don't you wanna see how deep I go?
Illyria: You drank a great deal of that poison. You called me a lot of names meant to hurt feelings I no longer have, and then you sat there for hours making noise with your nose.
Wes: I was dreaming, you twit.
Illyria: You said her name. Fred.
Wes: It was a nightmare. I don't suppose you have nightmares... or sleep or any of that human crap.
Illyria: In my time, nightmares walked among us, walked and danced, skewering victims in plain sight, laying their fears and worst desires out for everyone to see. This... to make us laugh.
Wes: I'll bet you were jolly as frat boys.
Illyria: And now nightmares are trapped inside the heads of humans... pitiful echoes of themselves. I wonder whom they angered so to merit such a fate.
Eve: I'm gonna die.
Spike: You make it hard for me to want to help you.
Eve: Angel, for someone you old, you're so young. I only know what they want me to know and only when they want me to know it.
Angel: You don't know anything?
Eve: Maybe. Maybe I know a lot... but I don't have access to it. It's locked in my head somewhere, and I don't have the key. Ready for the funny part? There was someone who could've told you everything you want to know... and you let the senior partners take him away.
Angel: Lindsey.
Eve: Lindsey's dedicated years of his life to the study of the senior partners. No one knows more about them than he does - what they've done, what they plan to do.
Angel: I thought he was after me. You're saying bringing Spike back, the fail-safe, that was all about the senior partners?
Eve: No. It's about you, too. He really doesn't like you... but he may know more about you than... well, than you do.
Spike: There's thousands of different kinds of hells. You got your fire hell, your ice hell... your... ice hell. Your upside-down hell.
Angel: I don't care if he's in 'toy poodles on parade' hell.
Eve: I'm not lying. Well, tell him I'm not lying.
Lorne: No one can fake it through the pina colada song. Not once the chorus kicks in.
Angel: You got a better idea how to do it, I'm totally open.
Spike: Didn't say that. Just pointed out that this one sucks. We're looking for a hell dimension in a haystack.
Angel: This is weirding me out. Is this weirding you out?
Spike: What, you never heard of Knight Rider? The Knight Industries 2000? K.I.T.T.? Never mind.
Spike: This isn't hell. It's the burbs. Close enough.
Wes: Are you telling me the great Illyria, idol of millions, was limited to one small dimension?
Illyria: I traveled all of them as I pleased. I walked worlds of smoke and half-truths, intangible. Worlds of torment and of unnamable beauty. Opaline towers as high as small moons. Glaciers that rippled with insensate lust. And one world with nothing but shrimp. I tired of that one quickly.
Wes: Then why stay in this world? Surely there's a world more appealing, maybe not the shrimp one, but one where you'd be welcome like you never will be here.
Angel: You don't know who we are?
Lindsey: No. Do you play in the league?
Angel: Lindsey, this whole life is a lie.
Lindsey: Angel. Make it quick.
Angel: If I was gonna kill you, it wouldn't be quick.
Spike: A heart? Whose are these?
Lindsey: Mine.
Angel: Gunn, no! What the hell are you doing?
Gunn: What needs to be done.
Angel: I'm not leaving you here.
Gunn: You don't make the rules here. Wolfram & Hart does. If one leaves, one has to stay. A void is impossible.
Angel: You knew.
Gunn: That thing about atonement.
Trish: Honey, what are you doing down there?
Gunn: I don't know. Must be losing my mind.
Lorne: Holy motor pool!
Lorne: What the daisy?!
Spike: I'm on fire!... Oh, never mind.
Lorne: Where's Gunn? Angel?
Angel: He, uh-he stayed behind.
Lorne: Stayed behind? But you never leave a - or... I guess we do. That's what we do now.
Angel: Damn... he is well-dressed.
Marcus: Oh, sorry for the intrusion. I'm Marcus Hamilton, your new liaison to the senoir partners.
Wes: The walls don't press in as hard when you can't see them.
Illyria: But they're still here.
Illyria: All I am is what I am. I lived 7 years at once. I was power and the ecstasy of death. I was god to a god. Now... I-I'm trapped... on a roof. Just one roof... in this time and this place, with an unstable human who drinks too much whiskey and called me a Smurf. You don't worship me at all, do you?
Illyria: Your world is so small. And yet you box yourselves in rooms even smaller. You shut yourselves inside... in rooms, in routines.
Wes: There are things worse than walls. Terrible... and beautiful. If we look at them for too long they will burn right through us. Truths we couldn't bear. Not every day.
Illyria: We are so weak.
Wes: Yes. Yes, we are.
Angel: I thought a few months of torture at the hands of the senior partners would have dug a little deeper.
Lindsey: Just scratched the surface. Turns out they can only undo you as far as you think you deserve to be undone. I wonder how Gunn's gonna make out.
Lindsey: You know what I know. Look around. The world's a cesspool... full of selfish and greedy beasts. We live, we die. Even you, babe.
Eve: Lindsey, don't.
Lindsey: That's what I like to see... the Angel of yore. Takes no prisoners, suffers no fools. How bout this? It's here. It's been here all along. Underneath. You're just too damn stupid to see it.
Angel: See what?
Lindsey: The apocalypse, man. You're soaking in it.
Spike: I've seen an apocalypse or two in my time. I'd know if one was under my nose.
Lindsey: Not an apocalypse. The apocalypse. What'd you think, a gong was gonna sound? Time to jump on your horses and fight the big fight? Starting pistol went off a long time ago, boys. You're playing for the bad guys. Every day you sit behind your desk and you learn a little more how to accept the world the way it is. Well, here's the rub... heroes don't do that. Heroes don't accept the world the way it is. They fight it.
Angel: You're saying everything we do... it's a distraction... to keep us busy from looking under the surface.
Lindsey: Ding! We have a winner! The world keeps sliding towards entropy and degradation, and what do you do? You sit in your big chair, and you sign your checks, just like the senior partners planned. The war's here, Angel. And you're already 2 soldiers down.