[APPLICATION; Taxon]
Your Name: Christine
Personal Journal: elcrescens
Email: myyahelle [at] gmail [dot] com
AIM: EsperEvolution
Characters in Taxon (if applicable): N/A
Character Name: Connor
Genre (TV/books/etc): TV
Fandom: Angel: the Series
Birthday: November 19th, 2001
Canon Point: During the events of “Inside Out,” after being visited by Darla in the warehouse and after watching Cordelia commit a virgin sacrifice, but before Jasmine is born.
Why this Character and Canon point?: Connor is an old favorite of mine, he’s a character that I often come back to because I have a huge soft spot for him. I pity him; he has the potential to be a very sweet boy, but often comes dangerously close to being a monster. He’s a victim of circumstance, constantly confused, easily manipulated and many of his problems could be solved with a hug. I’ve never taken him from this canon point before, but I chose “Inside Out” because he’s at the height of his confusion there, facing an enormous moral dilemma because Cordelia is the person he’s come to trust more than anyone else, but at this point her actions are so outrageous that even he can’t pretend that she’s doing what’s best for them anymore, let alone what’s right. He kind of desperately wants to run home to Angel and make things right, but he doesn’t know how, let alone whether or not he’ll be welcomed or trusted. Connor has trust Issues with a capital “I” and I would love to play him working through them.
Programmed Possession: His loft from Los Angeles. It’s not much of a functional living space, but he’s attached to it. It’s more or less a storage crawlspace that he’s been squatting in, so while it has a mattress and an old tv with an antenna, it’s also filled with junk for the building it belongs to. It’s never specified where his loft is, but judging by the stuffed birds and fake dinosaurs he has pushed into corners, it’s probably attached to the Museum of Natural History in some fashion, likely an off-site storage building for older, not-so-precious items.
Abilities/Weaknesses: Simply put, Connor is just physically better than a human being. He has most of the benefits of being a vampire without any of the nasty side-effects such as an aversion to sunlight or holy items. He possesses super strength and has incredible endurance. He doesn’t heal as quickly as vampires do, but a bit faster than a normal human, and can take a lot of damage before going down. He also has extremely good hearing and a heightened sense of smell, both of which lend themselves well to tracking. He’s a very skilled tracker, thanks to both his natural gifts and the brutal training he received as a child, and makes an excellent bloodhound if you can get him to heed you. It bears noting that although he appears human, he cannot attack anyone while under the influence of a sanctuary spell that bars non-demon violence.
Being so physically strong, Connor’s weaknesses are primarily psychological. He had horrible tunnel-vision and has trouble allowing himself to see the bigger picture, especially when he’s in one of his tempers - which he often is. He’s impatient, hot-tempered and easily manipulated. He is somewhat arrogant and occasionally over-confident in his abilities, which often leads to his being blindsided.
Psychology/Personality: Though he’s made some bad choices, Connor isn’t a bad kid by default. He’s still reasonably fresh from Quor’toth, all things considered, and is both naïve and easily manipulated, which has already been used against him to the detriment of others. Despite the fact that he had been raised by Holtz in order to kill Angel, Angel’s patience and persistence had started to win Connor over upon his return, though the two of them did get off to a rough start. His emotions are raw and largely uncomplicated, owing to the fact that he is entirely unsocialized, and in many ways, he’s very childlike. Kindness and patience are the best ways to win him over and earn his trust. This combined with Connor’s curiosity about his biological father would have been enough to get him to trust Angel given the opportunity, but there wasn’t enough time before Holtz staged his own death, and Connor clung to the only truth he’d ever known and let his rage get the better of him.
Connor has poor self-control. He loses his temper easily and is often irritable, especially when people pry into his business. The culture shock of returning to this world still hasn’t quite worn off, so he feels very lost and adrift, especially since being kicked out of the hotel for what he did to Angel. He is lonely, and has trouble relating to people since he doesn’t understand the trials and tribulations of every day life. Being alone has given him time to think, and he’s just starting to notice that there are people in the world who want to take advantage of his ignorance, which means he’s also beginning to realize that there are people who already have. Although he doesn’t recognize guile in other people very easily, he’s no stranger to lying himself, and as he proved over the summer, he does it very well when the situation calls for it. He is honest and doting with people he trusts (Cordelia would be the prime example), but has begun to use lying as a defense mechanism and is beginning to grow more wary of the people around him now that he has come to realize that there are a lot of people in the world who aren’t very honest. Holtz’s staging of his own death has left Connor with a lot of complicated feelings that he doesn’t understand and can’t quite disassemble yet. He still doesn’t know who was in the right, and while rage and love for the man who raised him drove him to believe what Justine told him at the time, he has begun to doubt as time goes on. He still doesn’t know if he should trust Angel’s side of the story, either, but has come to regret what he did. He is still struggling to wrap his head around the idea that Holtz could possibly lie to him, but the more he sees of this world, the more it seems possible.
He has a strong distrust for anything supernatural, despite being supernatural himself. He was raised to believe that in matters concerning demons and vampires, everything is purely black and white. Demons are evil, vampires are evil. Neither deserve to live. Even Lorne sets Connor on edge, simply because of the fact that he’s not human. Connor also hates magic of any kind, feeling the good it could do is always far outweighed by the side effects, and doesn’t think very much of people who rely on it. He feels that people who use magic shouldn’t be trusted, although it’s possible that he may be softening his harsh opinion of it since Willow restored Angel’s soul a second time against incredible odds.
On the flipside, he has a bit of a blind spot for people who are kind to him. He has been fond of Cordelia since she used her powers to cleanse him upon his return from Quor’toth, and the time they spent together while she was struggling to regain her memories only helped to foster the feelings he had already started to develop for her, fixated. His attachment to her has made it extremely easy for him to be manipulated, and though he may not have noticed at first, he’s starting to catch wise to the dishonesty game, and has severe doubts about Cordelia’s recent actions. Still, her constant reminders that he’s special and that she needs him pander to his abandonment issues and need for affection, making it far more difficult for him to pull away and confront the issue.
At his core, Connor has the potential to be a nice boy and could come to fully embrace the ideals that his father holds dear, but he needs a lot of guidance and patience, as well as time to dig through the hurt and confusion he’s found himself buried under. Inexperience and isolation have left him ill-equipped to deal with life, especially a life as complicated as the one he stumbled back into.
History: Connor is a very singular, unprecedented being, having been born the child of two vampires. Unable to properly give birth to her son, Darla staked herself during labor, trading her own life for his, but only after telling Angel that this child was the only good thing the pair of them ever did together, entrusting Connor to Angel’s care. Connor’s first few days of life were far more exciting than he could ever hope to remember; even before birth, he was being pursued by Wolfram & Hart and various other would-be captors. Some were cult members who wished to worship him, some were assassins who planned to slay him, and there were still others, like Wolfram & Hart themselves, who wanted to dissect and study him. Angel was able to bring Wolfram & Hart, being the primary offender, to something of a stalemate, and for some time, Connor was safe and in excellent hands, cared for by the entire staff of Angel Investigations in turn.
Though the law firm itself adopted a “hands off” policy concerning both Angel and his son, at least for the time being, not all of its personnel were happy to comply. When approached by the time-shifting demon Sahjhan, Lilah Morgan agreed to assist the demon lord in sabotaging Angel, for both personal and business reasons. As Connor had been prophesized to be the one who would kill Sahjhan later in life, Sahjhan himself went back in time to re-write the prophecy. Present day, Wesley Wyndam-Pryce, Angel Investigations’ resident expert on just about everything ever put into writing, translated that same prophecy to read “The Father Will Kill the Son” and began to have growing concerns about Connor’s safety in his father’s care. These concerns were furthered when it was discovered that Wolfram & Hart was spiking Angel’s blood with Connor’s own, forcing the vampire to develop a taste for his own child’s blood.
Also doing business with Sahjhan was Daniel Holtz, a vampire hunter whose family had met a tragic end at the hands of Angelus and Darla. Bent on exacting revenge for the loss of his wife and children, Holtz had designs to take Angel’s son from him, and used Wesley’s concern for Connor’s safety to make it happen. After meeting with Wesley on two occasions, Holtz convinced him to take the baby and run. Wesley kidnapped Connor and was intercepted by Justine, Holtz’s most dedicated follower. Slitting Wesley’s throat and taking the baby for herself, Justine then joined Holtz and the two of them planned to flee California and raise Connor together elsewhere. They, too, were intercepted, and wound up in a four-way stalemate with Angel, Lilah Morgan, and Sahjhan himself. The confrontation ended when Sahjhan opened a portal to the hell dimension of Quor’toth, which Holtz fled through with Connor in tow to escape Wolfram & Hart’s gunfire.
While it was only a matter of weeks for Angel and company, Connor and Holtz spent roughly eighteen years together in Quor’toth before they were finally able to return. Raised as “Stephen Holtz,” Connor had been brought up with only one purpose: to find a way out of Quor’toth and, should he succeed, kill Angel. When Connor first came through the dimensional rift, he attacked Angel without hesitation, as well as everyone else who had been standing in the lobby of the Hyperion Hotel. Angel eventually overpowered him and Connor ran, losing his pursuers in the streets of Los Angeles. Angel hunted him down and they fought a second time before Connor again went his own way, this time meeting up with Holtz, who had followed him through the rift. Holtz recognized that Connor was interested in getting to know his real father, that he was intrigued to find that Angel was not the bloodthirsty killer he had been raised to destroy, and gave him free reign to return to Angel for a time.
Connor took the opportunity to get to know his biological father, stunted and awkward as their interactions were. When it became clear that there was a real bond between the two of them, Holtz told Connor that he wished for him to go and live with Angel, learn all he could from him and find a place with his real family. Connor was hesitant at first, having grown to love and trust Holtz as his only companion and only real family after so many years together in Quor’toth, but after a tearful goodbye, he left with the intention of reuniting with Angel. Holtz seized this opportunity to set Connor up for betrayal, enlisting Justine to help him stage his own murder, for which Angel was framed. Connor swore vengeance when he discovered Holtz’s body, and together with Justine, he began to piece together a plan to punish Angel for what he’d done. After taking the time to have Angel train him and learning to predict and create his own foil to Angel’s fighting style, Connor and Justine sealed the vampire inside of a metal box and sank him to the bottom of the ocean - but only after Connor snidely explained to his father that “death was too good” for him.
With Wesley estranged, Cordelia gone missing and Angel at the bottom of the Pacific, Connor returned to the hotel to spend the summer with Fred and Gunn. The three of them spent their time trying to track down both Angel and Cordelia, with Connor being sure to sabotage their progress anytime they got too close to discovering Angel. Wesley was the one who wound up rescuing him from the ocean, and when Connor’s deception was laid bare, Angel banished him from the hotel. He spent several weeks living on the streets before he finally found a place to call home, and though he occasionally checked in at the hotel for one reason or another, he never asked to be invited back, determined to make it on his own without help from Angel or any of the others. When Cordelia returned without her memory, Connor was quick to befriend her and was the only one to be honest with her about her situation, having developed a soft spot for her when he had first arrived and she had been exceptionally kind to him. Cordelia appreciated his honesty, so much that she chose to stay with him at his loft instead of at the hotel as she waited for her memory to return. When a demon known only as “The Beast” appeared in the very spot Connor had been born, Cordelia was the only one, besides Angel, who didn’t think the demon was connected to Connor in some way, support he was grateful for, as he had also been convinced that they must have been linked.
They grew closer as portents of the apocalypse began to show themselves, and when fire rained down on Los Angeles, the two of them became intimate, Cordelia’s reasoning being that she wanted Connor to have something that was real before they died. The world, however, did not end that night, and what resulted was a mystical pregnancy that was developing far more quickly than it had any right to. Cordelia had changed in other ways, too - instead of being kind and patient with Connor, she had become sharp, domineering, and extremely manipulative, using her pregnancy to keep him close and his feelings for her to keep him tamed. She groomed him to be her champion, and when her secret came out and the rest of the Angel Investigations team realized she was the Beast’s master, she left, and Connor could do nothing but follow. Desperate to have their child be born before Angel could show up to stop her, Cordelia coaxed Connor into helping her perform a ritual that would allow it to be born immediately. Said ritual involved a virgin sacrifice, and though Connor disagreed with the act itself, Cordelia convinced him that one girl’s blood for their baby, a child she swore would change the world, was more than fair. He was visited by a vision of his mother, Darla, before the sacrifice was committed; Darla’s words brought him to tears as she begged him not to commit murder and appealed to his better nature, and in the end, Cordelia was forced to make the sacrifice and finish the ritual on her own, leaving Connor horrified and no longer convinced that what they were doing was in any way right.
Arrival Post (Third Person):
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.
Additional Third Person Sample:
Morbid curiosity had brought him there. Connor had been kicked out of the hotel upon Angel's return; at first he had been angry, even frightened, wondering what Angel might do to him in retaliation now that he was a free man above water. The answer seemed to be... nothing. Nothing more than the words "Get out of my house." No attempts at revenge. None of what Connor had expected from the monster that Holtz had painted him to be for so many years. Not for the first time, he doubted the truth of those stories. More than once, he thought he felt Angel's presence nearby as he walked the streets of this strange city, but he never saw his face, they never spoke, and he never felt he was in danger in those moments.
It had happened often enough that he found himself drawn back to this place, curious about the people that his choices had forced him to leave behind so soon after his arrival. Had Angel recovered? Was it still just Fred and Gunn there with him, or had that Wesley person come to stay, too? Was that demon still among them, the one with the strange clothing? And what about Cordelia? Had she been found? ... did they still blame him for her disappearance? She had gone missing the same night as Angel. He could see why that made him look like a suspect, but...
He frowned to himself as he dropped into a low crouch, carefully approaching the window in the garden from well below eye-level. He had been kicked out, but not banished from the grounds. He wasn't about to storm through the doors without an invitation, and truth be told, he would have been wary about entering even if he had been welcome, but there was nothing to be said against looking in the window, was there? He was doing fine on his own. He didn't need them. He'd found a place to sleep indoors and knew how to feed himself, and there were plenty of vampires walking the streets to take out his frustrations on. He was doing alright. He just... well. He just wanted to see a familiar face. Even if it wasn't a face that would be happy to see him in return.
Additional Sample: RP log from last year, story bled over into the Angel universe. I wrote for Connor and Alex in this log. http://bad-karma-bites.livejournal.com/4343.html.
Personal Journal: elcrescens
Email: myyahelle [at] gmail [dot] com
AIM: EsperEvolution
Characters in Taxon (if applicable): N/A
Character Name: Connor
Genre (TV/books/etc): TV
Fandom: Angel: the Series
Birthday: November 19th, 2001
Canon Point: During the events of “Inside Out,” after being visited by Darla in the warehouse and after watching Cordelia commit a virgin sacrifice, but before Jasmine is born.
Why this Character and Canon point?: Connor is an old favorite of mine, he’s a character that I often come back to because I have a huge soft spot for him. I pity him; he has the potential to be a very sweet boy, but often comes dangerously close to being a monster. He’s a victim of circumstance, constantly confused, easily manipulated and many of his problems could be solved with a hug. I’ve never taken him from this canon point before, but I chose “Inside Out” because he’s at the height of his confusion there, facing an enormous moral dilemma because Cordelia is the person he’s come to trust more than anyone else, but at this point her actions are so outrageous that even he can’t pretend that she’s doing what’s best for them anymore, let alone what’s right. He kind of desperately wants to run home to Angel and make things right, but he doesn’t know how, let alone whether or not he’ll be welcomed or trusted. Connor has trust Issues with a capital “I” and I would love to play him working through them.
Programmed Possession: His loft from Los Angeles. It’s not much of a functional living space, but he’s attached to it. It’s more or less a storage crawlspace that he’s been squatting in, so while it has a mattress and an old tv with an antenna, it’s also filled with junk for the building it belongs to. It’s never specified where his loft is, but judging by the stuffed birds and fake dinosaurs he has pushed into corners, it’s probably attached to the Museum of Natural History in some fashion, likely an off-site storage building for older, not-so-precious items.
Abilities/Weaknesses: Simply put, Connor is just physically better than a human being. He has most of the benefits of being a vampire without any of the nasty side-effects such as an aversion to sunlight or holy items. He possesses super strength and has incredible endurance. He doesn’t heal as quickly as vampires do, but a bit faster than a normal human, and can take a lot of damage before going down. He also has extremely good hearing and a heightened sense of smell, both of which lend themselves well to tracking. He’s a very skilled tracker, thanks to both his natural gifts and the brutal training he received as a child, and makes an excellent bloodhound if you can get him to heed you. It bears noting that although he appears human, he cannot attack anyone while under the influence of a sanctuary spell that bars non-demon violence.
Being so physically strong, Connor’s weaknesses are primarily psychological. He had horrible tunnel-vision and has trouble allowing himself to see the bigger picture, especially when he’s in one of his tempers - which he often is. He’s impatient, hot-tempered and easily manipulated. He is somewhat arrogant and occasionally over-confident in his abilities, which often leads to his being blindsided.
Psychology/Personality: Though he’s made some bad choices, Connor isn’t a bad kid by default. He’s still reasonably fresh from Quor’toth, all things considered, and is both naïve and easily manipulated, which has already been used against him to the detriment of others. Despite the fact that he had been raised by Holtz in order to kill Angel, Angel’s patience and persistence had started to win Connor over upon his return, though the two of them did get off to a rough start. His emotions are raw and largely uncomplicated, owing to the fact that he is entirely unsocialized, and in many ways, he’s very childlike. Kindness and patience are the best ways to win him over and earn his trust. This combined with Connor’s curiosity about his biological father would have been enough to get him to trust Angel given the opportunity, but there wasn’t enough time before Holtz staged his own death, and Connor clung to the only truth he’d ever known and let his rage get the better of him.
Connor has poor self-control. He loses his temper easily and is often irritable, especially when people pry into his business. The culture shock of returning to this world still hasn’t quite worn off, so he feels very lost and adrift, especially since being kicked out of the hotel for what he did to Angel. He is lonely, and has trouble relating to people since he doesn’t understand the trials and tribulations of every day life. Being alone has given him time to think, and he’s just starting to notice that there are people in the world who want to take advantage of his ignorance, which means he’s also beginning to realize that there are people who already have. Although he doesn’t recognize guile in other people very easily, he’s no stranger to lying himself, and as he proved over the summer, he does it very well when the situation calls for it. He is honest and doting with people he trusts (Cordelia would be the prime example), but has begun to use lying as a defense mechanism and is beginning to grow more wary of the people around him now that he has come to realize that there are a lot of people in the world who aren’t very honest. Holtz’s staging of his own death has left Connor with a lot of complicated feelings that he doesn’t understand and can’t quite disassemble yet. He still doesn’t know who was in the right, and while rage and love for the man who raised him drove him to believe what Justine told him at the time, he has begun to doubt as time goes on. He still doesn’t know if he should trust Angel’s side of the story, either, but has come to regret what he did. He is still struggling to wrap his head around the idea that Holtz could possibly lie to him, but the more he sees of this world, the more it seems possible.
He has a strong distrust for anything supernatural, despite being supernatural himself. He was raised to believe that in matters concerning demons and vampires, everything is purely black and white. Demons are evil, vampires are evil. Neither deserve to live. Even Lorne sets Connor on edge, simply because of the fact that he’s not human. Connor also hates magic of any kind, feeling the good it could do is always far outweighed by the side effects, and doesn’t think very much of people who rely on it. He feels that people who use magic shouldn’t be trusted, although it’s possible that he may be softening his harsh opinion of it since Willow restored Angel’s soul a second time against incredible odds.
On the flipside, he has a bit of a blind spot for people who are kind to him. He has been fond of Cordelia since she used her powers to cleanse him upon his return from Quor’toth, and the time they spent together while she was struggling to regain her memories only helped to foster the feelings he had already started to develop for her, fixated. His attachment to her has made it extremely easy for him to be manipulated, and though he may not have noticed at first, he’s starting to catch wise to the dishonesty game, and has severe doubts about Cordelia’s recent actions. Still, her constant reminders that he’s special and that she needs him pander to his abandonment issues and need for affection, making it far more difficult for him to pull away and confront the issue.
At his core, Connor has the potential to be a nice boy and could come to fully embrace the ideals that his father holds dear, but he needs a lot of guidance and patience, as well as time to dig through the hurt and confusion he’s found himself buried under. Inexperience and isolation have left him ill-equipped to deal with life, especially a life as complicated as the one he stumbled back into.
History: Connor is a very singular, unprecedented being, having been born the child of two vampires. Unable to properly give birth to her son, Darla staked herself during labor, trading her own life for his, but only after telling Angel that this child was the only good thing the pair of them ever did together, entrusting Connor to Angel’s care. Connor’s first few days of life were far more exciting than he could ever hope to remember; even before birth, he was being pursued by Wolfram & Hart and various other would-be captors. Some were cult members who wished to worship him, some were assassins who planned to slay him, and there were still others, like Wolfram & Hart themselves, who wanted to dissect and study him. Angel was able to bring Wolfram & Hart, being the primary offender, to something of a stalemate, and for some time, Connor was safe and in excellent hands, cared for by the entire staff of Angel Investigations in turn.
Though the law firm itself adopted a “hands off” policy concerning both Angel and his son, at least for the time being, not all of its personnel were happy to comply. When approached by the time-shifting demon Sahjhan, Lilah Morgan agreed to assist the demon lord in sabotaging Angel, for both personal and business reasons. As Connor had been prophesized to be the one who would kill Sahjhan later in life, Sahjhan himself went back in time to re-write the prophecy. Present day, Wesley Wyndam-Pryce, Angel Investigations’ resident expert on just about everything ever put into writing, translated that same prophecy to read “The Father Will Kill the Son” and began to have growing concerns about Connor’s safety in his father’s care. These concerns were furthered when it was discovered that Wolfram & Hart was spiking Angel’s blood with Connor’s own, forcing the vampire to develop a taste for his own child’s blood.
Also doing business with Sahjhan was Daniel Holtz, a vampire hunter whose family had met a tragic end at the hands of Angelus and Darla. Bent on exacting revenge for the loss of his wife and children, Holtz had designs to take Angel’s son from him, and used Wesley’s concern for Connor’s safety to make it happen. After meeting with Wesley on two occasions, Holtz convinced him to take the baby and run. Wesley kidnapped Connor and was intercepted by Justine, Holtz’s most dedicated follower. Slitting Wesley’s throat and taking the baby for herself, Justine then joined Holtz and the two of them planned to flee California and raise Connor together elsewhere. They, too, were intercepted, and wound up in a four-way stalemate with Angel, Lilah Morgan, and Sahjhan himself. The confrontation ended when Sahjhan opened a portal to the hell dimension of Quor’toth, which Holtz fled through with Connor in tow to escape Wolfram & Hart’s gunfire.
While it was only a matter of weeks for Angel and company, Connor and Holtz spent roughly eighteen years together in Quor’toth before they were finally able to return. Raised as “Stephen Holtz,” Connor had been brought up with only one purpose: to find a way out of Quor’toth and, should he succeed, kill Angel. When Connor first came through the dimensional rift, he attacked Angel without hesitation, as well as everyone else who had been standing in the lobby of the Hyperion Hotel. Angel eventually overpowered him and Connor ran, losing his pursuers in the streets of Los Angeles. Angel hunted him down and they fought a second time before Connor again went his own way, this time meeting up with Holtz, who had followed him through the rift. Holtz recognized that Connor was interested in getting to know his real father, that he was intrigued to find that Angel was not the bloodthirsty killer he had been raised to destroy, and gave him free reign to return to Angel for a time.
Connor took the opportunity to get to know his biological father, stunted and awkward as their interactions were. When it became clear that there was a real bond between the two of them, Holtz told Connor that he wished for him to go and live with Angel, learn all he could from him and find a place with his real family. Connor was hesitant at first, having grown to love and trust Holtz as his only companion and only real family after so many years together in Quor’toth, but after a tearful goodbye, he left with the intention of reuniting with Angel. Holtz seized this opportunity to set Connor up for betrayal, enlisting Justine to help him stage his own murder, for which Angel was framed. Connor swore vengeance when he discovered Holtz’s body, and together with Justine, he began to piece together a plan to punish Angel for what he’d done. After taking the time to have Angel train him and learning to predict and create his own foil to Angel’s fighting style, Connor and Justine sealed the vampire inside of a metal box and sank him to the bottom of the ocean - but only after Connor snidely explained to his father that “death was too good” for him.
With Wesley estranged, Cordelia gone missing and Angel at the bottom of the Pacific, Connor returned to the hotel to spend the summer with Fred and Gunn. The three of them spent their time trying to track down both Angel and Cordelia, with Connor being sure to sabotage their progress anytime they got too close to discovering Angel. Wesley was the one who wound up rescuing him from the ocean, and when Connor’s deception was laid bare, Angel banished him from the hotel. He spent several weeks living on the streets before he finally found a place to call home, and though he occasionally checked in at the hotel for one reason or another, he never asked to be invited back, determined to make it on his own without help from Angel or any of the others. When Cordelia returned without her memory, Connor was quick to befriend her and was the only one to be honest with her about her situation, having developed a soft spot for her when he had first arrived and she had been exceptionally kind to him. Cordelia appreciated his honesty, so much that she chose to stay with him at his loft instead of at the hotel as she waited for her memory to return. When a demon known only as “The Beast” appeared in the very spot Connor had been born, Cordelia was the only one, besides Angel, who didn’t think the demon was connected to Connor in some way, support he was grateful for, as he had also been convinced that they must have been linked.
They grew closer as portents of the apocalypse began to show themselves, and when fire rained down on Los Angeles, the two of them became intimate, Cordelia’s reasoning being that she wanted Connor to have something that was real before they died. The world, however, did not end that night, and what resulted was a mystical pregnancy that was developing far more quickly than it had any right to. Cordelia had changed in other ways, too - instead of being kind and patient with Connor, she had become sharp, domineering, and extremely manipulative, using her pregnancy to keep him close and his feelings for her to keep him tamed. She groomed him to be her champion, and when her secret came out and the rest of the Angel Investigations team realized she was the Beast’s master, she left, and Connor could do nothing but follow. Desperate to have their child be born before Angel could show up to stop her, Cordelia coaxed Connor into helping her perform a ritual that would allow it to be born immediately. Said ritual involved a virgin sacrifice, and though Connor disagreed with the act itself, Cordelia convinced him that one girl’s blood for their baby, a child she swore would change the world, was more than fair. He was visited by a vision of his mother, Darla, before the sacrifice was committed; Darla’s words brought him to tears as she begged him not to commit murder and appealed to his better nature, and in the end, Cordelia was forced to make the sacrifice and finish the ritual on her own, leaving Connor horrified and no longer convinced that what they were doing was in any way right.
Arrival Post (Third Person):
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.
Additional Third Person Sample:
Morbid curiosity had brought him there. Connor had been kicked out of the hotel upon Angel's return; at first he had been angry, even frightened, wondering what Angel might do to him in retaliation now that he was a free man above water. The answer seemed to be... nothing. Nothing more than the words "Get out of my house." No attempts at revenge. None of what Connor had expected from the monster that Holtz had painted him to be for so many years. Not for the first time, he doubted the truth of those stories. More than once, he thought he felt Angel's presence nearby as he walked the streets of this strange city, but he never saw his face, they never spoke, and he never felt he was in danger in those moments.
It had happened often enough that he found himself drawn back to this place, curious about the people that his choices had forced him to leave behind so soon after his arrival. Had Angel recovered? Was it still just Fred and Gunn there with him, or had that Wesley person come to stay, too? Was that demon still among them, the one with the strange clothing? And what about Cordelia? Had she been found? ... did they still blame him for her disappearance? She had gone missing the same night as Angel. He could see why that made him look like a suspect, but...
He frowned to himself as he dropped into a low crouch, carefully approaching the window in the garden from well below eye-level. He had been kicked out, but not banished from the grounds. He wasn't about to storm through the doors without an invitation, and truth be told, he would have been wary about entering even if he had been welcome, but there was nothing to be said against looking in the window, was there? He was doing fine on his own. He didn't need them. He'd found a place to sleep indoors and knew how to feed himself, and there were plenty of vampires walking the streets to take out his frustrations on. He was doing alright. He just... well. He just wanted to see a familiar face. Even if it wasn't a face that would be happy to see him in return.
Additional Sample: RP log from last year, story bled over into the Angel universe. I wrote for Connor and Alex in this log. http://bad-karma-bites.livejournal.com/4343.html.