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"Uh, Nina?"

This wasn't right. He knew the hotel — his hotel — like the back of his hand. He could walk the corridors blindfolded, even those in parts of the building that they had barely inhabited before the great move to the Law Offices of Wolfram & Hart. And while the Hyperion had managed to avoid sustaining heavy damage or infestation like a majority of the buildings in Los Angeles, hell wasn't nearly this well-kempt. Especially not where his former mailing address was concerned. The carpets were vacuumed, the floors had carpets, mirrors and glass polished to a glare-free shine...

Not only did he appear to be in the wrong hotel, but the wrong dimension, and that was a problem. A big one.

This was the last thing he needed, whether it be an actual case of dimensional displacement or some trick the Senior Partners were pulling on him in retaliation for overthrowing the Lords. Not that they needed an excuse to meddle in his life. They were the masterminds behind his newfound liveliness in spite of what the heavy glamour that hid his humanity from everyone had to say about him. Angel was alive, but it was important that everyone still believed he was a vampire.

It's like he told Wes; there's only one way to get out of hell. Act like nothing's changed.

Which was why he stared at what he could see of the buffet table across the way, but made no move to approach it. Eating actual food in public? Dead giveaway. (No pun intended.)

He should probably find shoes. Somehow, walking out of his room in nothing but a t-shirt and sweatpants had topped his list of poorly thought out life choices this morning.

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Buffy tended to forget (conveniently) that vampires felt her the same way she felt Angel because Angel was the only vampire she'd ever properly felt. She was kind of defective that way. The fact that Angel didn't feel her didn't immediately ping to her that something was wrong. Later, she might wonder about the smelling thing, only because she'd commented on it often enough that it was a thing she'd consider.

In any case, she jerked the earbuds out of her ears when he started speaking, catching the last half of his first sentence. "Uhm...this is my face? It's kind of always...been my face." She was giving him the most confused look ever because he wasn't making any sense.

"I don't know what ghost lesion is but it sounds gross so let's stay away from those. Also, chatting...were we chatting before I--are you crazy again? Because if you're crazy again I can probably find some shackles."

And now for some distractions because yum Angel and shackles.

Wait.

"Alternatively, are you evil again?"

Edited 2014-03-05 02:33 (UTC)

Was he crazy again? Probably. At least, there was likely some part of him that was completely off the rocker. Likely always would be. If not the dragon, Wes, and sheer stubborn determination, he would've gone mad during those months spent immobile, in pain, and babbling incoherently to a beast who now thought his name was that of a woman long gone. A woman whose face wasn't the one he's staring at now.

If they wanted to get a rise out of him, why hadn't they used her face and form instead of Buffy's?

Maybe it wasn't a rise they were aiming for. Maybe they just wanted him to squirm. Always a classic.

"Not as crazy as I ought to be, and we both know that option's presently off the table."

Were he in a better mood, he would've laughed. One of the few upsides to humanity was having a soul that was permanently bound to his being. The only way he could lose it again was if he did something crazy like coming clean about his human state of being and talked Spike into turning him.

The thought has crossed his mind, even if it's been vetoed every single time it does.

Angel wasn't getting any easier to understand. There was a brief moment where Buffy wondered if she was going crazy, if this was some sort of trick, or maybe she'd walked through a door and ended up--she stopped her internal monologue, turned in a circle and then again, stopping when she was facing Angel. Nope, still the hotel.

"Crazy? Uhm...sort of always a table-able option. Or shackles? 'Cause those are always on the table too. Just...saying."

He would forever be getting Buffy's best confused face. "I don't--Angel, did they do something to you when the whole..."

She took a couple of steps backwards, really wishing she'd thought to bring a stake or anything with her. Angel had been fine. She remembered the last time she'd seen him vividly and he'd been wracked with guilt, but he hadn't been crazy.

"Okay. Answers. I'm going to need some, otherwise, I'm getting the shackles out and we'll talk when you're less cucukoo for coco puffs."

Right, because bruises from iron shackles or otherwise was just the thing he needed to add to his current list of injuries. There was a gash on his side, a smattering of cuts and bruises, and he was pretty sure he broke his hand (again) during the fight with the Lords last night. He flexed it experimentally, bit back the urge to wince. Yep, definitely fractured it somewhere between the She-Skip and the T-Rex.

Damn, that was his good sword hand, too. And he was fresh out of primordial fixer uppers now that Wolfram & Hart was reduced to a pile of rubble.

He sighed, his frustration escalated by the pain surging up from his hand and into his shoulder. He really, really missed being able to heal from these kinds of things overnight. He should've woken up feeling refreshed, not like he'd just been hit by a bus.

"You need answers? You have the answers. You are the answer. You're the Wolf, the Ram, and the Hart. Pick up one of those three pieces of yourself and give it a good talking to if you're unsatisfied with the pieces you're getting out of me."

Edited 2014-03-05 03:40 (UTC)

It was only when he flexed his hand that Buffy realized he was hurt. Her eyes went wide.

"Okay. We should get you to...uhm...I've got a first aid kit in my room. I can--do the nurse thing and patch you up."

She hesitated a moment. He was going to need blood to really heal. She'd wait and see how crazy he was once she'd gotten him alone and patched up before she made the offer to let him have some of her blood. It wasn't the best option, but she didn't know where the other vampires in the hotel got their blood. She knew Bella had a door with a forest and she ate deer, but that wouldn't be an option for Angel right now.

"Come on. I'm not going to stake you," she told him as she gestured toward the hallway she'd come down.

He'd be more concerned about her noticing if he wasn't so convinced that this wasn't what it seemed. It's for the sake of keeping whoever and whatever this is talking and moving does he agree to come along, nodding in response to her offer. At the very least, they'd do something about the fact that he was forever on the verge of falling apart. Maybe that's what the goal here was — to put him back together without making it seem like they wanted him intact. Of course, wanting him whole couldn't be a good thing, either.

"Not like that'd do much." Not like she understood what he meant by that.

It wasn't very far, just down the hall. His comment got a bit of a look from her, but she assumed he meant bandaging. He'd heal fast enough that anything like stitches would be taken out hours later.

She stopped in front of a door, got a key out and unlocked it, stepping over the threshold before she said "Come in, Angel."

He doesn't need an invitation, but she doesn't know that. For all he knew, this was all for show, part of the Buffy rouse whatever demon was wearing her face was putting on or grand illusionist was weaving into creation. Thankfully, he grown accustomed to putting on the vampire act that he paused just short of the threshold out of habit, giving strength to his own illusion. One he didn't see the point in keeping up around someone who, to him, wasn't Buffy.

An illusion that was likely to be shattered sooner or later, nevermind how vital he considered acting like nothing changed was to getting out of hell.

In all likelihood, he wasn't even in hell anymore. Probably some Wolfram & Hart side dimension like the suburban prison dimension they'd held Lindsey and Gunn in.

"Love what you've done with the place." Sarcasm — though he had to admit, the accommodations, false as they were, weren't bad. They reminded him of better days.

Much better days.

By the time he was over the threshold, she was getting the first aid kit out of the bathroom. She gave him an odd look at the slightly sarcastic (why?) comment about the decor.

"Uhm...I didn't know you'd gone all Home & Gardens," she responded over her shoulder. "Why don't you come on in here?" It would be neater and she'd have access to the sink and hot water.

"Had a personal decorator for a while. Pretty sure something ate him."

That wasn't him being sarcastic. He'd caught a glimpse of the guy running for his life while he was lying helpless and immobile on the pavement after leaping off that building. There were zombies, vampires, and countless other demons flooding the streets. If the zombie (still tacky) didn't eat his brains, something else surely made a mess of them.

Obediently, he followed. He could turn heel and head the other way, look for clues in a place that wasn't currently occupied with the face of an ex-girlfriend, but if was being honest with himself? The familiar face was nice. And he hated himself for thinking that, for some small part of himself appreciating the opportunity to gaze upon the form, false as it was, of someone he hadn't damned to hell with him, because that was likely just what the Senior Partners wanted.

"It's nothing," Angel told her, making a point to stand out of view of the mirror. The glamour did nothing for his reflection. That was one of the few things the archaic spells he and Wesley cast on that talisman were unable to hide. "Just a few scratches. I'll live."

"And the weirdest part of that is that you had a personal decorator," Buffy quipped without pause.

She looked over at him when he protested that the scratches were nothing. "Getting them cleaned up and bandaged won't hurt. I promise, no Hello Kitty band-aids." She hesitated, watching him from beneath her lashes a moment. "You're going to have to take your shirt off."

This felt an awful lot like that first night she invited him into her house and she didn't entirely hate it, which she probably should have. She knew that, and yet...

In spite of better judgement, Angel does as he's told, pulling his shirt up and over his head. There's a bandage around his ribs, blood starting to soak through the area where someone or something managed to get him last night. It had been a frenzy of fighting there for a while, and it had been difficult to tell just whose champion had managed to take a swing at him. It's honestly a miracle he made it out of that fight alive, and probably wouldn't have if not for Lorne's intervention.

Wolfram & Hart wouldn't have allowed him to die, had it come to that. They wanted him to suffer, he knew that, but death would've been too easy of a way out, a kindness they refused to pay him. Wasn't that why some Buffy-faced apparition was intent on cleaning and bandaging his wounds? Put him back together only to break him all over again; something fixed with the intent to destroy.

There's bruising and some scaring, but not much. Anything that was once there has faded with magic, not time. Most of the faint evidence of once mortal wounds probably would've come close to killing him, had he allowed them to heal naturally. He didn't have time to heal naturally, not when it took a human weeks — months to heal properly.

Of course, he's forgetting the most important detail here. The scarring, faint as it was, paled in comparison to the lack of one of his more defining features. To add insult to injury, the Senior Partners had removed the tattoo on his back when they robbed him of the vampire. The last time he'd been without the ink had been the first time he was alive.

Edited 2014-03-05 05:55 (UTC)

"Do I even want to know what attacked you?"

She asks the question as she unwinds the bandage, trying to focus on that. She's not going to ogle Angel.

She's not going to ogle Angel.

She's not going to ogle Angel.

Except her memory is sufficient to remind her he's very worthy of ogling.

And...she's ogling. Or at least she's beginning a good ogle when she notices something missing. Her brow furrows as she lets the bandage drop to the tile floor, reaching out with one hand to ghost her fingers over his shoulder blade where his tattoo used to be.

"What happened?"

"That was—" Angel grunts involuntarily, sharp tendrils of pain spiking out across his ribcage and back. He lifts an arm to make the unwrapping process easier on the both of them. "Either the T-Rex or the She-Skip. Not sure which. Just pain, light, singing, and a whole lot of back up. Sort of got ganged up on before the Hagan Shafts the loan shark planted on the Lords had time to go kaboom."

She hadn't been there, of course, but he was still operating under the assumption that she was something from one dark dimension or another, even if she hadn't been standing on the sidelines personally. These are things she — he, it, whatever was beneath that faux Buffy exterior — already knows, terminology that doesn't need to be explained.

But then her fingers brush against his shoulder, and he tenses, his eyes lifting to their reflection in the shower door, watching her.

"Guess it was a little too white hat for their tastes." Mythical beast the bulk of the mark might've been, but it was a mythical beast from a religious text. He didn't envision the Senior Partners as big fans of illuminated manuscripts.

Edited 2014-03-05 22:32 (UTC)

Half of what Angel says doesn't make any sense to Buffy. She simply gapes at him between dabbing at the wound on his side. "Ooooookay. So you've had an exciting summer...and I'm going to pretend I caught something besides the T-Rex and kaboom."

Yeah. Nope and the confusion on her face makes it clear she doesn't understand that terminology.

"Too white hat?" Buffy has never seen the book of Kells and she's got no idea that his tattoo was from a religious text. She'd just always thought it was pretty. She's distracted by his skin, smooth and unmarked beneath her fingertips. She catches sight of something out of the corner of her and her eyes lift up, catching sight of their reflection in the shower door.

"Angel..." It's a gasp, barely a whisper.

Again, knowledge Buffy shouldn't possess — not now, not ever — escapes him in lieu of believing he's interacting with something or someone wearing Buffy's face and not the Slayer herself. So when she notices his reflection and starts to catch on to the truth of the matter, he isn't bothered by it. He even shrugs, as if being a living vampire-no-more isn't that big of a deal.

"What, admiring the handiwork? Nothing you and yours aren't already aware of."

The look she gives him is 100% patented 'are you crazy'. "And winner of the 'i just got knocked on the head' award goes to...."

She presses the palm of her hand against his shoulder and swallows hard. His skin is warm. With her other hand, she grabs his wrist, fumbling around for a pulse point. Tears spring to her eyes as the reality of this catches up to her.

"I can't ever find it. In gym we had to take our heart rate and I couldn't--I blurted out 'I'm dead'. I never did find it."

She's still fumbling to find his pulse, his words forgotten in light of Angel's human running through her head. She is not going to cry over this. She is not going to cry.

But she is going to be teary.

In all fairness, Angel has be knocked over the head a few dozen times in the past few weeks. Wes has been chiding him for continuing to use powerful, primordial magics to heal those injuries when they were meant for Wolfram & Hart's medical division to use on demonic clients, not a human being. They were the quickest fixes around, though, the ones that did the job of ensuring that he looked as if he'd healed overnight from whatever was done to him, whether it be having his head slammed into the pavement or being run through with a sword.

Continuing to appear as if he was coming out on top was likely doing a number on his newly re-mortalized body and he knew it. (And he didn't really care.)

He's not looking at her face, doesn't see the tears. He would've smelled them if— well, she was figuring that out. Or stumbling back upon what she should already know. No, his eyes are on the hand encircling his wrist and fingers that are unable to find his pulse.

Angel sighs, his patience with this whole charade wearing thin, annoyance starting to bubble to the surface.

Grabbing hold of her hand, Angel lifts her hand instead to his neck, pressing her fingers to his jugular. It pulses as the blood pumps through it, full of the life he shouldn't have but does for reasons he can't even begin to explain to someone who isn't in the loop already. It had been hard enough taking the blame for the fall in front of a crowd of thousands and being praised as hero even though he was the one who literally damned them all.

The unwanted humanity is part of his own unique damnation.

"Always go for the neck. Bigger vein, stronger blood flow."

She's silent for a moment, letting the fact that she can feel Angel's pulse thrumming under her fingers soak in. After a moment, she blinks away the tears and nods, swallowing hard.

"Life lessons from an apparently former vampire."

She clears her throat and jerks her hand away from his neck suddenly, as if it burns.

"I should...sorry. I'll get back to the whole nursing gig."

It gives her something to focus on, crouching to dab ointment on the wound. "You should probably have stitches but since I failed cross-stitching in Home Ec, you probably don't want me doing it. I can bandage you up and we can see if someone else can do it for you."

It's about then that Angel loses his patience. He's been taking it one day at a time for far too long now and frankly, he's tired being messed with. He's tired of a lot of things — tired in general (he could sleep for a week if someone let him) — but being messed with like a rat in a maze was sitting pretty high towards the top of the list. He rises from his place at her side, moving away from her hands and her in general.

"Okay, I'm done. That's enough of whatever the hell this is supposed to be. I've had it with your games. You want something from me, you ask for it. Don't send Wes or put on your best Slayer face. If we're going to do this, we're going to do it face to actual face. Right here, right now. So, I'll say this once: Take off the mask."

Feisty and brazen as ever, demon or no demon. They can't hold him down, no matter how hard they try. And oh, how they've tried.

Edited 2014-03-09 17:26 (UTC)

Buffy takes a step back, hands up in the air. She's not looking to fight with Angel, particularly when he's human and hurt. He might be able to hold his own, but she's still the strongest slayer on record, particularly since Willow's spell. She's got more than her dose of slayer power working with her.

"Okay...I don't know what part of Crazy Town you've been living in, but this is my actual face."

Even to someone who isn't in the loop, it's obvious that Angel thinks she's someone else.

"Who do you think I am, Angel?"

The last thing Angel's looking to do is get hurt again, especially while he's fresh out of magical quick fixes and has to rely on good ol' human healing. He isn't thrilled about it, and had the left him at the Hyperion where he'd laid down the night before, he would be pushing through the pain and the blood soaking through his bandages and boarded the dragon to seek out that epicenter of power that wasn't the Lords. They were put down, but something was still out there. Something that wasn't Wolfram & Hart, if Wesley's word could be trusted.

Speaking of—

"A spokesperson. A child of the Senior Partners. Eve's sister — or brother, for all I know. A demon doing their dirty work. I could keep listing off the variables, but it all comes back to them: Wolfram & Hart."

God, his side hurts. Standing with it gaping open like that isn't doing him any favors, but stubbornly, he stands tall in spite of it, barely batting an eyelash in response to the urge to cry out. He's had practice. He's getting better at it. World's best actor, forever and always.

(World's most unbelievably stubborn idiot, too.)

"Either I'm speaking to a minion or I'm speaking to a Partner, but considering the lack of feline features... My money's on minion."

"Or, option C, you're speaking to Buffy." She considers him a moment and sighs.

"I don't know what's been going on in your world, Angel, but in mine, I'm no one's minion. Would this minion have all my memories? 'Cause we can take a detour down memory lane if that would help before we firmly plant ourselves in 'would you please let me look at that wound' place."

Angel takes a step back, bumping into the closed bathroom door, clearly not into the idea of letting her — it, whatever — near the wound that he's aggravating.

"You can't be, this— It's hell and she's not—"

But in spite of his pessimistic attitude, Angel's something of a closet optimist. He's an optimistic pessimist, prepared for the worst but open to the best. It can't and he knows the chances of this being Buffy are slim to none, but...

He sighs.

"Alright. Fine. You want to stake your claim to Slayer fame, then prove it. If you're Buffy, then you should be able to tell me what she said to me before she plunged that sword into my heart."

It's harsh, a cruel reminder for both of them. He brings it up, because there's no way they could know. Spike and Drusilla had been long gone by then, halfway out of town. The only ones in the mansion when he'd been sucked into that vortex had been himself and Buffy. If she really is Buffy, she'll be able to tell him that.

But she's not. So the cruel reminder is just another item on the list of the painful memories he must bear.

Is the way she goes sheet white and the absolute agony in her eyes any help at all in proving that she is who she says she is? Because that's her immediate reaction to the memory he recalls. She swallows hard, already mired in the pain of that moment. It's one that she's never gotten over. Years later when Xander told her that she didn't know what it was like loving someone that had to be killed, she had reminded him that she had loved Angel more than she'd ever loved anything and she'd had to stick a sword through his heart and send him to Hell. It was a wound that never healed. Her hand instinctively went to the bite scar on her neck, palm close against the skin, covering it, protecting a spot that is vulnerable after all of these years, one of only two scars on her entire body.

"I told you to close your eyes and you were so trusting. You had no where you were, what had happened and only half an idea of who you were, but you closed your eyes and I kissed you--" Pain is one of those emotions that rush in unbidden to strangle off words, to make breathing an impossibility and speaking more difficult. She pushes past it, taking a shaky, shallow breath to wrap up the memory. "I told you I loved you and I stuck a sword through your heart."

She whips around on her heel, turning her back to Angel, head bowed. "And you never knew it, but I left Sunnydale for two months after that. I quit being a slayer, I quit being Buffy Summers. I quit being the girl who'd given up the person she loved most in the world to save the world."