Day 37: Sun Room (4th Shift)

[secret_orchard]

There were still too many things on Armand's mind for him to truly relax. The morning with Alec had been a help. And seeing that TK was going to be well helped him know that it was time to work out something else, but what? He'd already, without success again, tried to reach one of the club leaders about his sole idea of something new and different

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[light_wicca]

The sunlight shining down through the skylight actually felt very nice, and Willow almost asked her nurse if she could go out into the courtyard for this shift instead. She had a distinct feeling the answer would be 'no,' though, so she didn't ask and simply curled up on a free armchair by herself, notebook and one of the pens in hand. Angel was sitting in a corner on the other side of the room, but she decided to leave him alone this time. He looked like he needed it, and she had some thinking to do anyway.

So, where to start? They needed to learn more about where they were, obviously, but... maybe she needed to write down everything she'd learned already first, just to clear her head. And that was the difficult part. Should she start with the monsters, or with whoever Leslie was supposed to be?

Willow had barely touched pen tip to paper before she absentmindedly glanced up and noticed an unfamiliar woman talking to Angel. That in and of itself wasn't so strange; it was the fact that she was acting as if she knew him, and that Angel was looking utterly confused. Willow frowned, wondering what was going on. After silently debating for a moment whether or not to go over and find out, she slowly stood up and stepped towards them. She needed to talk to Angel about tonight, anyway.

"Hey... Angel?" she asked as she came to a stop next to them. "I forgot to tell you something important. About tonight." She glanced curiously over at the other woman. "What's going on?"

[blurred_divide]

When she patted his knee, Angel just looked down at her hand, growing more and more at a loss. He knew she was -- ?

What. Okay. That wasn't the answer he had been hoping she'd grant him to give a nice transition into an explanation of what might be going on. Although he was starting to think he had no idea himself.

As the woman (had he heard her right, when she said her name was Bones?) bent down, Willow chose that exact moment to arrive and it was at that point that Angel decided to give up any semblance of trying to take control of the situation.

"I don't know," he admitted, glancing back at the woman. "We seem to be having a bit of an -- identity crisis."

[centermusthold]

"No, his name's Booth," Brennan pointed out as the redhead approached them. 'Angel' must be who their captors wanted Booth to believe he was, which was... an odd name. "Why would they want you to think you were called Angel?" she asked, not certain whom she was addressing. It was unlikely either Booth or the newcomer would be aware of the answer to that question.

Speaking of the newcomer... early twenties, West Coast accent, and not an athlete, though she appeared in decent physical shape. She also had red hair, which piqued Brennan's curiosity, as she had observed a statistically disproportionate number of redheads and blondes amongst the so-called "patients."

"Well, I know my name, and I know your name," she said in answer to Booth. "Although..." She looked up at the younger woman standing over them. "...we don't know each other's names. I'm Dr. Temperance Brennan of the Jeffersonian Institute." She turned to look at her partner. "So it would seem the only person having an identity crisis is you, Booth."

[light_wicca]

...Booth?

"Um... I'm Willow," she said in reply, mostly because she was at a loss for anything else to say and it seemed like the best thing to do first. "And... believe me, he's definitely Angel. I've known him for... six years now." An idea occurred to the redhead suddenly and she turned to address Angel again. "Unless your name was Booth before you were a va - um, before." Considering the circumstances, maybe it wasn't a good idea to make things any more confusing than they probably already were for Dr. Brennan.

Where on earth did she recognize him from, anyway? Angel kept to himself, as far as Willow knew, so unless Dr. Brennan met him in L.A. somewhere...

Or did this have something to do with the fictional universes thing again?

[blurred_divide]

If there was one upside to having a visual memory like his, it was that Angel could usually pinpoint exactly who he had or hadn't ever met before over the course of his very long unlife. He definitely hadn't ever seen this woman.

This would've been easier if Temperance was as confused as they all were, but her confidence was making it hard to broach the entire I think we might be experiencing a doppelganger effect topic which, however bizarre, was at least something he knew a little bit about. Although he had to admit, this was a somewhat different situation. Willow's doppelganger, when it'd happened, had still been Willow in origin. Temperance seemed to be talking about someone else entirely, just with the same...face?

Huh.

He looked over at Willow for a second. "No, it's -- " The name wasn't even Irish. He shook his head slightly, returning his attention back to Temperance.

"All right, look, I'm not...who you think I am. You probably know someone who looks like me back home, back where you came from. It's a little complicated," he said, almost apologetically. "I can explain, but I need to know what you've learned so far about what's going on here."

It'd be easier if she'd already heard the parallel dimensions theory from another patient, but something told him he wouldn't be that fortunate.