xiii [ location: hyperion hotel, basement ].

[undoing.livejournal.com]

[ ooc | backdated to after this thread, handwaving dawn's performance of the ritual. sarah, if you'd like faith in on this, jump right on in-- same for anyone else who feels their character would be present. :> also, we can treat this like a party post with jumping around/threadjacking, etc. whatever works best for y'all. ]

Everything's foggy at first and there's shapes that, while still somewhat caught in the tail-end of the ritual's affects on him, he mistakes for others, relying on what little of his sight is working and unable to access the other senses that would give him a surer sense of who's around him. He doesn't remember Taxon. Not yet. What he thinks is happening is an echo of the past for him, of another time when his soul was ripped from him the 'wrong way'-- but then it had been of his own consenting, where here it had been a game, something out of his hands and entirely in someone else's control. To the blurry figure in the cage with him (Godric) he ventures, "Connor?" Then, turning his head towards the equally blurry figure outside the bars (Cordelia), he commands in a tone that isn't as loud or commanding as he thinks it is, "Faith. Stop. He's just--"

But then his sense of smell flares back to life with an intensity that makes him shut his eyes, shallow hard and slam his head back against the stone he's chained to with a sickening crack that would've damaged him, had he been human. It won't even cause a bump; it'll just hurt for a while, but the pain is tangible. Pain is always tangible. He understands pain, especially the self-inflicted. Right now, it's all he understands.

The scents are wrong. It doesn't fit the picture of what's supposed to be happening in his head. Connor. Where is Connor? He wants to ask, but his lips won't move and instead, the unvoiced question receives an answer in the form of a memory of a woman he can barely stand; light brown hair, twinkling hazel eyes and a smirk he would have liked to-- quite literally-- rip right off her face.

"Hits you where you live, don't it?"

"..."

"Of course I know. You lost your son. Well, gave him up."

"To save him."

"Which you did. He's happy and well adjusted now that he has no memory of you-- and the rest of the world, including your best friends, never even heard of Connor."

But, he'd spoke of him. He remembers now. Sitting in his office at Wolfram & Hart, smirking and laughing as he told Buffy of the son whose existence he'd hidden from the world. ...yet, he doesn't know why he did it. What should be an obvious answer is just a big, gaping blank in his memory; the reasoning that it wasn't him, but Angelus, not within his grasp. He hadn't done that when he was Angelus last. He'd killed a bunch of people, terrorized Fred (Fred, he smells Fred in the room and his eyes snap open as he turns his head and looks at where she's sitting on the stairs, vision still not fully back yet), gave Wes a run for his money and bit Faith, but he hadn't spoke so...callously of his son. And Connor had still been his then and not the family the Senior Partners had reassigned him to. It didn't match up like trying to fit two pieces from different puzzles together to form a picture he didn't even have the box art to.

"I-- I don't--" He tries to stand, but finds he can't. Yes, he'd been shackled then, but he hadn't been bound to anything. "Why am I chained to the wall?"

Comments

[ location: hyperion, upstairs ]

[stacked]

If Faith was a different person (if she wasn't offering to the point of begging) she might be insulted that his sidekicks need to be spared Angel's bitchfit while she gets the brunt. But she's not a different person, and she'll take whatever he dishes out and come back for more and be glad about it.

"Yeah, fine." She stands without any obvious effort, just smooth motion and ease. "Come on, let's go. You pick the place, babe. Not like it matters." She doesn't brush against him on the way to the door, keeps her distance for now. There's an order to this that has to be respected.

[ location: hyperion, upstairs ]

[undoing.livejournal.com]

Angel leads the way up the stairs and while he's tempted to turn down a corridor that doesn't lead to his room, he keeps on that path he could walk blindfolded to his own. If they came looking, they'd find him, but he would send them away. As much as they-- or rather, she, in Cordelia's case-- need him right now, he can't be there for them while he's in this state; can't be happy and relieved like they want him to be. They don't get it, they couldn't possibly get it. And the kicker is that Cordelia, if she were from a point from before her death but during that faux coma awakening, would be able to, to some degree, but he doesn't even want to think about Jasmine right now. He feels lower than Jasmine and that's saying a lot, considering he held himself in higher regards over the fallen higher being because he had free will and used it. What free will did he have here? None. He wasn't in control.

When it came down to it, Angel was more upset over that lack of control than he was about hurting Cordelia, Dawn, Buffy, Petrana or anyone else.

The room is covered in a layer of dust when they enter, clear signs of his habitation elsewhere and the moment that door shuts behind them, his walls crumble and he collapses into the nearest chair to stop himself from falling to the floor. And then, just as suddenly, he's rising from that seat and snatching a priceless vase he brought back with him from Sri Lanka that's centuries older than he is off the nearest shelf and hurling it at the wall with a vicious snarl.