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[open/closed]

Who: Faith Lehane, Lydia Martin, open to all!
Where: Library
When: 04-Aug
Rating: PG+ (language)
Summary: Faith Lehane arrives by destroying 3 stacks of books in the library
The Story:

i came in like a wrecking ball (closed: lydia martin)

Faith would swear the library is where people go to nap in vacuum-sealed silence. Bring a pillow, find a corner -- it's good in a pinch when you've got nowhere else to go. As long as you're clean and not smattered with blood.

Or flying through the air.

Into one of the impossibly tall stacks. Why do they even position the shelves like this? Now Faith has to fight to stop the entire row from Domino-ing all the way down. The second stack starts to go down and she's only just getting up from where she landed after thudding into the first one.

"Four!" OK probably not the best thing to shout but it's all that comes to mind as Faith tries to at least warn whoever might be in those rows. She's already in the air again, arcing up and over the still-falling shelves. When she hits the ground, it's just as the third stack kisses the fourth, sending it teetering precariously. She holds her breath, hoping for the best and expecting the worst.

But the fourth stack stays upright, allowing Faith to re-position the one she's holding. Well, at least the books didn't get crushed. Finally, she blinks, swiveling her head back and forth. This is not London. This is definitely not an alleyway. And her friends are also not present. So, uh.

"Where the hell am I?"

don't you ever say she just walked away (open to all)

Most of her first hours in Wonderland have seen Faith re-shelving books. She's done the whole alternate dimension routine and hopped through a portal or two, so really it's not worth it to make a whole big deal out of the event. Well, aside from the whole actual Wonderland detail. She'd have been happier winding up in a universe of shrimp than have to deal with queens and rabbits or whatever.

"These aren't even alphabetical," she grumbles. Seriously, who organizes this stuff? Why does she have to keep referencing a number?

She's less than gentle, taking only enough care not to damage a paperback or jam one of the hardcovers. Reading them? No. Not that Faith can't get down with some research but it needs to apply to something and the only thing she cares about now is getting home.

If a book is going to tell her how to get home, she knows damn well she's not Fred Burkle levels of smart enough to make it work. So, re-shelving. And lots of scowling.

Maybe it's a little bit denial, but she's not ready to check out the digs yet. Just because they got a room waiting for her doesn't mean she's just jumping right in to get all domestic on it. Until she finds out about the food. Girl could devour a hoagie right about now...

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Oh good that's much better. Faith can totally handle this situation. Even if it means watching Angel have a stroke in the middle of the library.

"Oh, she's just you're average vampire reality TV star." It's pretty succinct and has the added benefit of automatically describing just how ridiculous the entire situation is. And hopefully believable enough to then delve into the really ugly stuff afterward. "Bit a famous dude, traded it up for fame."

"Somehow I'm not surprised that even undead, she's still a social climber."

For the time being, the stroke seems to be on hold, although his expression stays fixed in a state of perplexity-- Harmony, famous. Some part of him resents that her high school dream actually came true, given all the crap she'd put them through, but he feels better knowing he'd never trusted her to begin with.

"Reality TV. That stuff is garbage." He's pretty sure they can agree on that.

"Good platform for denouncing slayers, though." Faith can't help it, and she laughs at how absurd it is to actually say the thing aloud. Not that Faith necessarily 100% disagreed with her, considering Faith's own personal history, but it was still in comparison to vampires. Who she claimed didn't always kill people, sometimes just drank some from them or, even better, turned them.

"Apparently she and Spike have a history?" That had been weird, too.

"Denouncing slayers?" That part might bear some elaboration, but Faith's next question has his expression shifting, contorting until his mouth is twisted into a disgusted scowl that lasts all of two seconds. They'd all been subject to Spike and Harmony's drama at Wolfram & Hart's offices, even years after they'd broken up.

"They dated," Angel tells her, frowning, and it sounds ridiculous when he says it out loud, even to him, even having seen the fallout. "I'm not really sure how it started, but there was some ugly fallout while she was working for me as a result. They, uh-- weren't exactly well-matched, far as I can tell."

"Yeah well they matched pretty well in our bathroom." The words roll off of Faith's tongue naturally, the result of having an actual rolling conversation with Angel. She hesitates at first, the 'our' a word she wishes she had substituted for something more innocuous and vague.

"But I mean, seemed like a casual thing or whatever. No fallout too ugly, I mean."

He catches that slip, his eyebrows immediately shooting upwards, though whether or not it's because of the matching or the bathroom itself remains to be seen. Probably a bit of both, to be honest.

"Guess I'm not too surprised. She was still carrying a torch for him for awhile." Even if it was just a casual encounter-- not that it was any of his business. Some part of him might have been jealous of them having the emotional and non-cursed capacity for a casual encounter, except for the fact that it was Spike and Harmony immediately turned him off entertaining the idea of jealousy for more than half a moment.

"You said 'our.'" Like he's letting that go untouched. "We working together?"

While her smile doesn't completely falter, Faith's eyes aren't crinkled quite as tightly as she nods in answer to his question. At this point, she figures she should try to keep driving the conversation again.

"In London. Working on helping people there." People they were kind of mostly responsible for hurting in the first place. "It's actually a couple blocks there, called Magic Town now."

"The name could probably use a little work."

He guesses it's fitting, but come on. Originality never goes out of style.

"Guess I had to get out of Los Angeles eventually. Couldn't stay in the City of Angels forever," he surmises, his brows knitting together for a moment as he shifts his weight, re-crossing his arms across his chest, trying for all the world to keep from all-out fidgeting. He's always been terrible at that. "I'm guessing we make good partners."

He'd always thought they would-- except Faith doesn't seem quite sold on that fact, judging by her body language, subtle as the shifts in it have been.

At the comment on the name, Faith chuckles, a genuine and light thing.

"Yeah, we were all right." The smile lingers as Faith sifts through her memories of the past year. A lot was bad, but the good times were pretty good. "Took awhile to get a stride, though. Culture shock for me wasn't all that bad, though. Guess Giles wore off on me after awhile or something."

The fondness toward the Watcher is plain in her smile, but also in the way Faith's voice softens at his name. Another rocky relationship (what other kind has she ever had?), Giles had been the most solid father-figure she'd ever known. Traveling Europe together with purpose had been exactly everything Faith had needed since making the choice to try to own her own life again.

"Plus, you're a damn quiet roommate." Some of the fondness transfers now, as Faith meets Angel's eyes again. Mischief takes over her eyes, glinting as she speaks. "Even if your favorite hockey team is garbage."

"Giles?"

Angel raises an eyebrow; it's been a long time since he's heard Faith say anything good about any Watcher, though he'd seen her relationship with Wesley begin to mend with his own eyes. If they could come back from where they'd once been, he guesses anyone can-- and it means a lot to know that Faith is out there fixing things, letting people into her life where she once shoved them out and away, insisting she was better off that way.

She wasn't. Just like he wasn't. They both needed the reminder, sometimes.

"I really have missed a lot." He smiles carefully, his own gaze fond as he meets hers. Whatever distance there is between them, whatever has changed that he doesn't know about, he glad to see something he recognizes when he looks at her. Camaraderie or mischief-- maybe it's the combination of both that hits him close to home.

"Like your team's any better."

"Pff," she waves a hand toward him, continuing her dis only vaguely. "Sorry, West Coast. You got nothing on the Atlantic."

It feels a little more natural, this. Almost like she's shoveling dirt into the crevasse between them, slowly building that common ground back up. Her smile keeps coming easily, the good memories she had before everything went to shit bolstering her mood.

It's enough that her guard drops a little, and Faith turns to keep shelving books haphazardly. Sure, she'd sort of paid attention to the bossy chick's instructions but when it came down to it, Faith was pretty sure she should be thanked for putting them back at all. And it's a good way to enjoy this moment for a bit, to not accidentally ruin it with details of Angel's future and of how unsure she is about her own life.

"You really just gotta deal and move on at some point, here."

"I don't know. I mean, there are plenty of things I can move on from," Angel begins, crouching down just long enough to pick up an armload of books and help her put them to rights, unwilling to let her handle it alone even as they talk. On his end, it's almost comforting-- it's been a long time since he's had anyone from home around who remembered what he did, even if Faith actually knew a hell of a lot more. As unsettling as that had the potential to be, it was nice, not to have to worry about catching someone up.

Cordelia had been so far behind that she hadn't even known what she'd meant to him, and she'd been too angry for him to even begin to tell her.

"I forgave Buffy for sending me to hell, but this is hockey." Favored sport among vampires, thanks to the games being indoors and at night. "Pretty serious business."

That gets a laugh out of Faith -- just a bark that's as much surprise as it is amusement. Something that feels familiar. And she knows if she examines it too closely, it might fall out of her hands.

So, she just grabs one of the books from his armful and keeps moving. Just keep moving, and maybe she won't have to think about anything too much.

"Not even a good comparison, psh." Faith's face twists to show her lack of being impressed at Angel's hell, and intent to derail this into a pissing match. "Nothing on prison food, let me tell you."

"You wanna play it that way? Prison food's pretty bad-- pretty sure that's what they served down there, but even that's got nothing on rats."

Two can play at this game, and there's something easy and familiar about it, comforting in the face of how overwhelmingly different their dynamic must be in this future of hers.

"I've got centuries on you, Faith, I could do this all day."

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