taxonomites | [ Holo | Location: Sanctuary ]

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[ Holo | Location: Sanctuary ]

He was sure something with the ritual had gone wrong. Not that there was much that could go right, he corrected himself, the sick, heavy feeling that had settled in his stomach so many hours beforehand still refusing to let up. He blinked several times as his eyes adjusted to the change in lighting and scenery; he had gone from a dark warehouse with the windows boarded up and rusted meathooks hanging from the ceiling to… this. He couldn’t think of how to describe it. It was so different from anything he’d seen before, even since coming to Los Angeles – bright, metallic and utterly foreign.

“Cordy? Can you hear me?” He cringed as the sound of his voice echoed back. He hadn’t been expecting that.

Connor looked up, attempting to process his surroundings. What was that up there? He shook his head, causing his already mussed hair to fall in front of his eyes as he moved forward, almost tripping down the first step before taking the rest down to the floor without incident. He had to find some way out; things were happening back at that warehouse and Angel was due to arrive any minute, he would have to fight him to keep him from interfering – or keep him from getting hurt, he wasn’t sure which now. Maybe he was here because of the ritual, maybe Cordelia had sent him away... except that didn’t make sense. Not after everything she had done to make sure he stayed close.

It must have backfired somehow. … hmph. That was the price of relying so heavily on magic.

“I guess weirder things than this happened,” he muttered to himself, his eyes finally accustomed to the brightness. Another look around revealed there was no exit that he could see. There was, however, a pedestal a few steps ahead of him with some device on it. He frowned as he examined it as best he could from where he was standing.

Usually, it didn’t pay to touch something if you didn’t know what it was. Especially not if magic was involved. It wasn’t quite as foreign as the rest of the room, however, and he took a few steps closer to get a better look at it.

“… kind of looks like a video game,” he thought aloud. The more he talked aloud, the more that heavy feeling in his stomach abated. Maybe it was best not to think about what had happened at the – no. No way. He couldn’t just cut and run like that. “… nevermind. Can’t waste time here. I have to get back.”

It was a great plan, except for the part where there was no door. He scowled and cupped his hands against either side of his mouth to help his voice project, turning his face upwards as he shouted. “Can anyone hear me? Get me out of here!”

If nobody answered, that meant it was just time to start punching walls. He’d punched his way through the barrier of a hell dimension. He could definitely punch his way through a regular wall. … eventually.

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Angel felt different, and it wasn't just because he'd spent a year confined to a living human body. The Senior Partners had taken his demon away from him during that time, knowing that he would need it and use it to combat them, forcing him to find his way with the limitations of an average man. While that experience had changed him, it wasn't why he felt different. Being a vampire again had taken some adjusting to, but it was the fact that he'd come to accept himself and forgive himself for all he'd done. Sometimes life dealt a person a bad hand and it was possible to make up for your mistakes, to learn from him. He hadn't been a good person in life, but what he did while soulless wasn't necessarily his fault and he understood that, now.

That weight that had been sitting on his shoulders during that mess with Cordelia being possessed by Jasmine was now off, giving Angel room to breathe and come to terms with other things in his life not his determination to atone for his wrongdoings. Things like being a proper father to his son.

"I don't age. I don't change," he said, despite that, though it was in that same light tone. "You look tense. Are you okay, Connor?"

Connor thought 'tense' was probably putting it mildly. He hadn't passed by a mirror since his arrival, but he could guess that he probably looked much worse for wear. Exhausted, spattered with a fine spray of blood, jeans torn open, and he was almost positive he still felt the tracks left behind by dried tears on his face. It seemed so long since he'd cried them now, and at the same time, mere moments, the scene still vivid in his mind, the image of Cordelia slashing that girl's throat replaying itself every time he let his own thoughts go still for more than a moment. The sight of Darla on the floor in that girl's place. Had that been his own imagination, or had his mother wanted him to see?

He swallowed once, feeling the color drain from his own face.

"I... what happens to the people we leave behind?" he asked, looking up to Angel for some sort of answer. "We were waiting for you. Now that I'm not there, are you..." He trailed off, frowning as he struggled to articulate himself. "What's going to happen to Cordy?"

If Angel were capable of going pale past the permanent complexion his vampirism blessed him with, he would've been gone ghost white at such a question. What's going to happen to Cordy was something he'd yet to detail to a lot of people. Angel didn't like to talk about it, had trouble even saying her name at times. Though he knew that she had been given a better fate than they had originally assumed - a Higher Being, working directly with the Powers That Be - he still had a lot of issues with how everything had gone down. He'd lost so many people. Doyle, Cordelia, Fred-- God, Fred. This Connor didn't even know about that.

Silently, he hoped Illyria wouldn't make a return appearance. As much as he would admittedly take comfort in seeing the primordial demon again, he didn't want to expose Connor to how bad things got. Yet, he couldn't bring himself to lie to his son. Lying may be almost second nature to the vampire, but lying to his own flesh and blood is something that hardly pleases him.

"That's not something we should talk about here," Angel said quickly, dismissing the topic with a casual wave of his hand. "Let's get out of here first, get you back to the hotel."

The expression that flickered across Connor's face in reply was one of anger, though he fought to suppress it. Losing his temper was something he did far too often, and it hardly ever yielded positive results. Instead of lashing out, he gave a single, stiff nod, accepting Angel's answer for the time being. Was it wrong, he wondered, that he was relieved to have been pulled from that grisly scene? He was still worried about what would become of Cordy, but over the past few days, it had become more and more obvious to him that something was wrong with her. He hadn't known how to get away and make things right. This place had done part of that for him.

He couldn't help feeling guilty over being even the smallest bit relieved.

"The hotel is here?" was all he said out loud, making an effort to swallow the rest of it down. There was a lot to talk about aside from the hotel; Angel seemed different, Angel seemed to know so much more than he did, and appeared remarkably calm compared to Connor's recent memory. Clearly, there was a lot to discuss. But right now wasn't the time.

Angel tensed, bracing himself for however Connor may lash out in response to not being given immediate answers, and was surprised (although pleased) to see the boy swallow his anger and accepting what he was told. It was not what he'd been expecting, but it worked in his favor and he was glad to see that his son still had some control over himself. He'd been worried that he'd been pulled from a point where he was so far gone that he'd had to wipe his memories and replace them with new ones. The Connor from his point in time was a well-adjusted young adult who understood and appreciated what Angel had done, but this one was without the balance those fake memories of a normal childhood gave him. He was going to have to find his balance another way.

"Yeah," he answered, turning back towards the car in hopes that Connor would follow. "Sometimes people a sent here with things. They sent me with the hotel."

The concept was more than a little puzzling for him. Had Angel arrived with the hotel beside him? Had it been waiting just outside that strange room? Or had it been elsewhere in the city and he'd just happened to come across it? He frowned as he looked downwards, appraising himself.

"I didn't come with anything." Not as far as he could tell, anyway.

"As far as you can tell," Angel said, as if reading his son's thoughts. He pulled open the driver's side door, nodding to the passenger side before he climbed in. "We'll check the map when we get there and see if they sent you with anything."

"Alright." Connor nodded in reply, opening the passenger's side door for himself and sliding into the seat without much of the grace that often shone through when he was hunting. It took him a minute to make himself comfortable, and he shifted in the seat a few times before pulling the door closed and fumbling with the seatbelt.

He frowned, folding his arms over his chest. "... who else is here that we know? Faith said hello to me. Willow, too."

Angel drew in a long, unneeded breathe and let it out as he started the car, took it out of park and headed back down the road towards the hotel.

"A few people from home - no-one you know, though. I'll... Talk to them. Introduce you. Some of them know of you, others don't. People I knew when I still lived in Sunnydale, before I came to LA." He paused at a stop sign, no matter how useless it was to, given that few people here had cars, then drove on. "And, Drusilla."

"Drusilla," Connor echoed thoughtfully, wondering if she had been the woman who had contacted him and not given her name. She had called him "little brother." He knew Drusilla from stories, from the history lessons Holtz had given him in an attempt to shape him into tool for revenge, from the simpler explanations Angel had given him of events long since past.

"She talked to me, I think. She's strange."

"I made her that way," Angel admitted, finding no sense in lying to his son about something he still felt the need to atone for, even after his redemption when Los Angeles got out of hell. "Drusilla's mine. I turned her, some two hundred or so years ago. Drove her mad before I did it, and did it so that I could preserve that madness as an eternal work of art. I had a pretty sick perception of the world, back then. Drusilla's one of the worst things I ever did."

He was her damner and now, her greatest protector. One of the reasons Angel had so many enemies in Taxon beyond people not understanding that he wasn't a threat while in possession of his soul and was not in control of losing it when the hamsters glitched him to be without it was because of Drusilla. He stood up for her when others came down on her, ensured her safety. He felt it was the only thing he could do, since he couldn't undo the damage inflicted upon her. She'd been her as long and consistently as he had, and during that time, he'd grown increasingly fond of her in a way he never had.

"She's not a threat to you. As far as Drusilla's concerned, you're family - even more treasured, since you're a tangible piece of Darla she can actually touch and talk to. And, she's got a chip in her head that prevents her from attacking anyone. Even soulless, she can't hurt anyone. Don't worry about her."

Connor listened as patiently as he was able, processing the information as it came. Another vampire that broke the supposed rules. 'Safe.' As if there really were such a thing. Not even humans were entirely safe, he'd come to learn. He'd never understood that until recently. In Quor'toth it had been just him and Holtz against everything else, against all the demons, with vampires just fairy tale monsters that he had been promised he would meet someday.

And now, as time went on, everything he had come to learn about vampires, everything he had come to understand, he was forced to make exceptions for. Mostly in Angel's case, and though he had been reluctant to do so at first and still harbored his fair share of hesitation, he was coming to terms with the fact that Angel really was different. But this Drusilla? She didn't even have a soul.

"So even without a soul," he went on to confirm, "She can't hurt anyone. What if the chip stops working? What then?" And what was a chip, anyway. Like a potato chip? That seriously made no sense.

Whatever.

"It won't," he reassured his son, even though he wasn't absolutely certain that it would continue working. Angel wasn't the best when it came to technology, and he harbored a lot of distrust and loathing for the Initiative that had less to do with Riley Finn than most would assume. Those who knew about what the Initiative forced him to do during World War II weren't in Taxon, and none of them would speak of it to those who didn't; not even Spike.

Angel went silent again as they drove through the streets of Taxon, past buildings that looked ancient and modern and futuristic, all stuck on the same street like some sort of conglomerate lane that was part of theme park. Taxon might as well be one, it fit most of the requirements for a theme park or at least some sort of interdimensional zoo.

The hotel reached, Angel pulled around the back and parked, climbing out of the car. In truth, he hadn't been spending much time here as of late, having made something of a habit of hanging around Sookie's place and getting closer to the fae than he was to anyone from home these days. Whatever his relationship with Sookie is has been put on the backburner, however. Connor comes first. Angel's through being the awful sort of father he hated his own for being. He was determined to do things right this time.

"Home sweet home."

Connor, too, remained silent for the remaining duration of the car ride, staring out the window with his fingertips resting against the glass as they went. The architecture here had no real theme, and though he was still rather new to the world, he knew enough to realize that what he was seeing was to be considered abnormal. It was strange and had a jarring effect; everything seemed just a little out of place. He supposed that was how most of the citizens felt, too. It would be hard, he thought, not to feel out of place here.

He let himself out once the car had been put into park outside the hotel, shutting it behind him before turning to examine the front walk. It was just as he remembered it. So coming to this place hadn't changed the hotel at all, except for its inhabitants.

"Looks just the same," he voiced aloud, glancing to Angel before he started to make his way up the front walk. "Inside, too? Nothing's changed from LA?"

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[ Holo | Location: Sanctuary ]

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