Alone: the absence of others, solitary.

We face the most important parts of our lives separated from the company of the other beings who walk this earth. When the fear comes, insidious in intent, we are alone. Apart from the very beings that in large part define us, we confront the essence at our core and we come to know it as the quality which makes us move from act to act, never content with a final decision.

In a freeze-frame moment, Angel became alone. Cordelia lost in corridors of pain, Wesley unconscious, Angel had no human connection. Until Buffy, until her friends, until Cordelia, until Wesley, Angel as a souled being had never known the simple pleasures of someone telling him about their day, or complaining about something, or wanting to be with him. Yes, for over a hundred years, he was alone. He had no friends, he had no companions, he had nothing. Did he recognize his aloneness? No. He had nothing to judge the quality of his life by.

Now, Angel felt achingly, numbingly, hellishly alone. Before his new life in LA, alone had meant nothing to a souled vampire who didn't know the meaning of companionship, of family, who flitted around the edge of the bright glow of the Slayerettes, ashamed to go any closer to such pureness. Doyle, Cordelia, Wesley: they changed that. Each in turn, each in their own uniquely human ways, his three friends, his family, changed him. Angel had become accustomed to dealing with Cordelia's need for praise, Doyle's love of beer and women, and Wesley's niggling insecurities and suppressed talents. The vampire had finally found a way to live in the light.

For one heart-stopping stretch of time, Angel thought that he'd lost his family.

Beyond any practical thoughts of coming apocalypses lay a much more simple terror. Without Cordelia and Wesley, Angel would be alone. Screw needing his connections to The Powers That Be, he knew what he really needed. The vampire with the soul craved other creatures with souls that didn't look at his pale skin and typically black ensemble with a sneer. To Cordelia and Wesley, Angel's being a vampire was just a part of the whole, inseparable and obvious, yet not the only thing he was.

To them he was a friend, a father, a confessor, a fiend, a companion, and a co-worker.

For Angel, they represented his reasons for living.