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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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She moves closer, scrunching up her face in more than just reaction to those toes.

"Your middle toe is what. You know it's not supposed to be longer than the other ones, right?" Distraction is the name of the game here. Because something is off, but Faith can't put her finger on it yet. Angel seems like he's in a bit of a daze which is maybe not totally uncharacteristic at home in the flat -- in a strange hotel that begets lots of questions and investigation, though? She's finding that hard to believe.

Or maybe he's got post-Buffy brain. That always did a number on people...

Angel looks down at his toes for further inspection — there's nothing wrong with the middle one, longer than the others or not — and when he looks up, Faith is close. Too close. He takes a step back instinctively, no longer accustomed to letting people get this close to him, especially those the vampire glamour is meant to fool. He bumps into the wall behind him, that inherent grace not so inherent anymore.

Wesley probably would've laughed at him the first time he tripped over air, were the fact that he did so something to laugh about. It was more a horrifying part of the reality he was going to have to endure and work around than something to poke fun at him for.

"Right."

Her brow knits together, and Faith instinctively takes two full steps backward, out of Angel's wider-than-she-thought personal bubble. She was good at reading signals (nothing to do with the slayer so much as everything to do with a broken home life) and even if she wasn't, that would've been a big red flag. Angel could sometimes be a little klutzy when he was forced into a situation he wasn't used to or couldn't navigate for whatever reason.

This shouldn't be one of those times. "Didn't mean anything by it."

Not that that's really what she's saying. Sure, those are the words that come out of her mouth, but in a hollow sense that meant no real text had carried by them. It was filler, while she watched Angel with a look akin to predator hunting prey -- something's hinky and she's learned over the years when to leap and when to heel. If he needed a little space, she could give it. For a moment, anyway.

It was, because a human being with a recently stitched up side courtesy of his ex-girlfriend was sort of lacking in the natural grace department. Honestly, it's a wonder he hasn't tripped over air in front of some Big Bad in hell and given himself away completely. Miracles apparently do still happen, if not on the grander, much more preferred scale.

"Stop that. Stop looking."

That look; the scrutinizing, the careful attention to detail as if waiting for him to do something that would tell her just what's going on that makes him so... off. And he realizes how off he's being. It was easier to work around being off when his sole companions were a dragon and a ghost in the know. Being around people who honestly know him is trickier. There were only going to be so many times he could trick Spike into doing something vampire-ish before he had to step up to the plate himself and fail spectacularly at the performance.

"Not here, not out in the open like this."

"Shit." Faith doesn't mean to let the curse slip, but she can't help it. A thousand situations are running through her head, ones she's thought up before, because Faith did stuff like planning contingencies nowadays. Angel acting sketchy wasn't really something she's comfortable with, but she's here, she'll deal with it and it'll be OK.

"C'mon, let's get a room." She winces. "Not-- nevermind. Let's just find somewhere off the beaten path." She moves, trying to take the lead while still keeping him in her line of sight. She didn't like this -- not the way Buffy reacted to her, and not the way Angel is behaving. It all spelled out more trouble than Faith felt like she could handle right now. She thinks about asking him if he'd seen her yet, but that can wait for closed doors and a sanity check.

Shit. That's what he said right before he slammed into the pavement and broke nearly every bone in his body at the start of this hell-tastic year. Discovering you've been reduced to a living, breathing, mortal being while mid air? Sucks. Really sucks. It gave a whole new meaning to the phrase 'look before you leap.' Check your pulse before you leap, make sure it's absent and not heartily present before you jump off a skyscraper.

"Here," Angel steps around her, hand landing on the knob of a door he knows for a fact leads to an empty room. It's one of several he'd pulled open moments before while looking for a way back to hell. He holds it open, ushers her inside and locks it firmly behind him once she's in.

And then he paces, back and forth in front of the doorway, eyes glued to the floor.

"I don't know how to address this. I haven't really had to address it. Not directly. I've gotten pretty good at hiding it. Really good, actually, but a lot of that's a series of complicated, primordial glamours that were incredibly awkward to apply..."

Buffy saw it because he was hurt, because the bleeding hadn't yet stopped. Maybe it would've if he'd let anyone near him after the battle, but he'd insisted upon dressing his own wounds, too fearful of what Nina would discover had he let her wind the bandages around him herself. (That and her werewolf side was a bit unstable and an unhinged werewolf around blood... not a good idea.) Faith would see it because she knew him, and he didn't want her to see. He wanted her to know.

It would make her the first person he actually told about this. He hasn't even told his son, doesn't want to burden him.

The paces stops and he looks up heaving in a breath, then letting it out. "Alright. I should just... say it. Okay. Here it goes."

I screwed up.

"I'm alive."

She's not really seeing what's unfolding in front of her. Faith can be the most astute of people, except for when she starts down the wrong tunnel with the blinders up. The signals she picks up are usually danger signals, built in at a young age and heightened beyond reason by supernatural gifts and experiences no teenage kid should have ever gone through.

So the shifty movements and complete vagueness have her on high-alert. To the point of having her hand at the stake on her side and moving back and forth over whether she needs to use it or not. It was a familiar internal conflict; one she's had on a weekly basis for the past year or so, and one she wasn't getting any better at fighting.

When he finally spits out the two words, Faith falters, brow creasing (seriously it's going to stick like that someday) as she stares at Angel's face. Her eyes dart back and forth between his eyes while she processes the words. It wasn't what she'd been expecting and trying to translate it beyond her initial assumptions proves a slower process than it should, had she been simply keeping up in the moment.

"Uh... yeah. Obviously." He's walking, talking, and freaking out. Clearly he's alive. Faith's not getting it, though. Not really taking in the weight of the word in its literal form.

He is not freaking out. ...okay, he's freaking out a little, but when you're a humanized vampire in hell who has the entirety of the literally damned place convinced that you're still a vampire? Coming clean about being the H word is a big deal and worth freaking out over. Especially since Buffy had already stumbled upon the knowledge when he would've rather she remain in the dark about it.

Now he's got extra corners to dodge, unexpected streets he would rather not walk down to figure out how to navigate. It was easier when the only ones in the know were a ghost and a dragon.

Angel shakes his head, takes a step closer. "No, you're not getting it. I'm alive; heartbeat, pulse, and all. Human."

She doesn't move, but Faith does stand up a little straighter. She looks him over again, and if her eyebrows dip any lower she's going to transport back to the stone age and start grunting in communication.

Then she does move, to the side, and around Angel. Faith wants to get a good look at him -- what he's claiming is impossible, right? Was there anything impossible to them? Happiness, she thinks. Happiness is impossible and this is the closest thing she would think of for Angel's definition of happiness.

"Human." She clarifies, because she needs to hear the word aloud in order to actually process it. She laughs, then, because it's absurd and doesn't make sense and the only other option would be to attack him and feel out how he responds. And Faith's not quite there, yet. Not that it's out of the realm of possibility.

She's laughing, but he's not. There's nothing funny about the situation he's found himself in, about the how and the why of his being mortal.

Angel regards her grumpily, crossing his arms over his chest. "I'm not kidding. I'm human, Faith."

Well, clearly there's only one way to figure this out: Assume that this is not Angel and force the truth out of him.

So she moves forward, assuming that not only is he still a vampire but is potentially even more than that. Faith's fighting has always been more reliant on brute force than grace and tactic, so it's more of a bum-rush than a planned advance. She's not buying this bullshit and she's not about to get herself killed by being naive, but maybe she'll get herself killed in a fight she's letting her emotions get her into.

Bad move. Angel may be human and injured, but losing the demon within doesn't mean he's lost all those centuries of experience that he gained while he was still one. She rushes him and he moves to catch her off balance and counteract her would be assault, to use her momentum and lower center of gravity against her.

He's no longer faster, stronger, or swifter than a Slayer, but he's still a force to be reckoned with. Gunn and his crew alone had proved that a human could be a lethal weapon if wielded properly, and he's been doing just that since he was fit to hit the streets in hell. It's one of the many reasons why he's been able to keep this charade up for so long. He's just as dangerous alive as he is undead, thus making it harder for those around him to tell the difference.

That, and he's familiar with Faith's moves. That definitely comes in handy.

When Faith lands on the floor on her back, Angel's a lot closer than her instincts prefer and she jerks to move against him again until she registers what just happened. He'd known exactly how to counter, exactly what to expect, and he'd barely touched her. No swings, no jabs-- all maneuvering.

"So. Human."

"Human."

Good, she believes him. Hopefully. Faith's the first person he's willingly confided this in. The dragon knew, because he'd come across him before the glamour was applied and Wesley... Well, Wesley had ties Angel wished he didn't have. It was a constant internal conflict him; being grateful for the chance to see a fallen friend again and hating that the only reason he was around was to play liaison for the partners. Angel snipped at Wesley more than the ex-watcher deserved, but they were all under an extreme amount of stress and there was nothing about any of their situations that Angel was okay with. Wesley, unfortunately, being the man in the suit who delivered news from the big kitty upstairs, bared the brunt of that.

"Wolfram & Hart has an interesting sense of humor." Among other things.

"Right." She watches him for a moment, trying to figure out whether this is bad or really, really bad. And not just the human part but also the Wolfram & Hart thing. She should have had another drink, why hadn't she just grabbed a bottle? Then maybe the weird ache in her head could be justified with something more fun.

"Mind if I...?" She motions for up, because at least this will give her more time to process and figure out how to deal.

This— this is what he needed. The understanding, the ready acceptance, the absence of shock, hurt, and what had looked like a lingering desire to deck him for daring to hide it from her. Buffy, that is. And truth be told, if not for the circumstances that lead to her untimely discovery of his humanity, he would've kept hiding it from her. She didn't need to know. She wasn't a part of what he was involved in, wasn't a part of his life anymore.

Faith was and likely always would be.

He held out a hand to her to help her back to her feet. "Gotta work on those landings."

"Gotta work on a lot of things." She's up with only the grace allowed her profession, because she's still reeling from this bizarre revelation.

It's quicker than Faith thought that she comes down firmly on the side of really, really bad considering their whole situation. And she even seems to be on track with his line of thought as her mind turns to Buffy almost immediately.

"Buffy's here."

He frowns, the corners of his mouth turning downwards almost immediately at the mention of the other Slayer's name.

"I know."

It's a grimace; he knows, and he isn't all that thrilled about it.

"Gonna be a problem?" On lots more levels than he's probably thinking. Faith's really not sure she's got the sway to deal with all of this right now; she's gotta get some kind of bearing and fast. That means cutting through the bullshit right quick.

He shakes his head. "Not anymore than it usually is. Or was. I'm not too sure about the should be. Time's doing a... time thing."

Really, he ought to be more bothered by the prospect of being out of sync with them than he is, but at this point in his life, finding himself a few years behind his Sunnydale associations is pretty much par for the course. Must be Tuesday, take a number, etc. Karma kicking in for all those times he knowingly and deliberately tampered with the normal flow of time.

Faith's quiet for a little bit, giving herself another moment to adjust with new information. Time things, well, she's not all that familiar with. But there had been other weird crap happening that she wasn't sure of, too.

"Yeah." She's not sure she wants to sound like the crazy one this time, but Faith needs those bearings. And it's Angel. Maybe they had hit a couple trust speed bumps at home, yeah. This was more important. "Buffy act weird at you at all? Like-- more than usual."

"I don't think I'm the right person to be the judge of Buffy weirdness. There's been a constant weirdness between us since Sunnydale."

Maybe if he hadn't been treating her as some grand Wolfram & Hart illusion specifically designed to fuck with his head, he would've picked up on something a little more weird than their standard brand of weird, but he hadn't. To be honest, Buffy was too busy focusing on how weird he was acting to act too weird around him herself.

"Why, did she try to start something with you?"

The shrug that comes out of Faith is one she hasn't displayed in a little while -- a classic sign of Faith's own uncertainty about a situation.

"She was talking about some sister -- and she didn't mean one of the newbie slayers." It had left Faith questioning Buffy at first, and then herself. Recent events were only adding to the confusion: before Faith arrived here, Buffy had called her from the states talking about a sister, too.

A shrug of uncertainty is better than a shrug indicating her own certainty in her inevitable death in the wake of feeding herself too him after shooting up with orpheus. He's done a lot of hard drugs in his time, but nothing's quite affected him like that did. It gave new meaning to 'split personality complex,' giving body and voice to two sides of the same coin while he was still blitzed out on the stuff.

Ironically enough, the desire for disassociation had come from the souless side of himself, not the other way around. It was himself without a soul that had been unable to deal with the ties that bound him to the things he did while capable of goodness. He remembers how much that had sickened him. And for him, that wasn't all that long ago.

"Huh," is his only comment to that, but he doesn't think too much of it.

In his rational mind, Faith not being able to remember Dawn is likely a glitch that comes with doing the dimensional shift. Magic from one reality didn't always carry over to another or was represented differently than it was in the realm in which it was cast. Memories of Dawn were an illusion on the grandest of scales — perhaps imprints of her were, too.

In time, maybe this place would make him forget her, as well. Just like hell had made people remember Connor, and cause his son to remember everything Angel had joined up with Wolfram & Hart to ensure he forgot.

"She say anything else to you?"

Edited 2014-04-08 01:37 (UTC)

Faith shakes her head, recalling Buffy's immediate picking of a fight as soon as they came face to face. It was a little jolting, if she were to be honest, but not something she couldn't deal with. Walking away had seemed the best choice, but Buffy following along was pretty new, too. Being an adult about things is hard, and now Faith's got all this confusion, too.

"No, but I think I met the girl and made her cry." Which was also awkward.