All Goes Onward and Outward (3/7)
Title: All Goes Onward and Outward
Chapter: 3. Those Angels, Forever Falling, Snare Us
Author: whichclothes
Fandom: BtVS/AtS
Pairing (if any): Spike/Angel
Rating: PG-13
Author's Note: This fic has 7 chapters, which I'll be posting over the next few days. It was based on the following prompt from maharet83, a lyric from Leonard Cohen's song, The Law:
Now the deal has been dirty
Since dirty began
I'm not asking for mercy
Not from the man
You just don't ask for mercy
While you're still on the stand
There's a Law, there's an Arm, there's a Hand
I don't claim to be guilty
Guilty's too grand
Thank you to faketoysoldierfor the wonderful banners! Previous chapters here.
I always really appreciate feedback. :-)
Chapter Three
Those Angels, Forever Falling, Snare Us
My mother laughs
At the angels who wait for us to pause
During the most ordinary of days
And sing our praise to forgetfulness
Before they slap our souls with their cold wings.
Those angels burden and unbalance us.
Those fucking angels ride us piggyback.
Those angels, forever falling, snare us
And haul us, prey and praying, into dust.
--Sherman Alexie, Grief Calls Us to the Things of the World
When the door opened, he was so startled he froze in shock. He’d almost forgotten there was a door there at all.
A guard beckoned him out and he came slowly, warily as a frightened fawn. He blinked in the harsh lights of the corridor, trying to keep his equilibrium amidst the sudden onslaught of sensory input.
The guards shackled him and took him away. They had gone through three separate locked barriers before it occurred to him that nobody had ordered him not to speak. “Where…where are we going?” he asked, his voice cracked and hesitant.
“Visitors,” said one of the men, prodding him forward.
Visitors? He didn’t think he was permitted any. And who would come to see him? He had no one.
They brought him to a small room with a metal table. There were two chairs on one side of the table, one on the other. They told him to sit and then they locked his wrists and ankles to his chair.
One of the guards, an older-looking bloke with a tattoo of an eagle on his forehead, leaned in close. He smelled of cut grass. Perhaps he’d mowed his lawn before he came to work today.
“You behave yourself, you hear?” he growled. “You act up, we’ll run you right back to that hole for good, and no more books, either. Got it?”
Spike nodded meekly. Jesus, what if they took away his books?
The guards gave him a final glare and then left. He waited a while. This room was warmer than his cell, and his body sucked in the heat gratefully. He heard footsteps and the door swung open.
Two people came in. Spike’s nostrils flared as soon as he scented them. One of them-a bird who looked perhaps thirty-was a Slayer. The other carried the unmistakable old paper and dust smell of a Watcher. Spike eyed them guardedly as they sat across from them. They both seemed taken aback by his nudity.
“Erm, Mr. Pratt, we’ve-“
“Spike. My name is Spike.”
The Watcher cleared his throat. “I do apologize. Spike. I’m Dylan Hartley, and this is Lucy Cherukuri.” He nearly put out his hand to shake, then thought better of it. “We’re-“
“Watcher and Slayer.”
“Precisely. Mr., erm, Spike, I must begin by begging your forgiveness. The Council wasn’t aware you’d been taken into custody until the trial began, and by then it was rather too late to explain to the Americans who you were.”
“I reckon they knew perfectly well who I am. That’s why they keep me locked up.”
“Yes, well, if we’d known earlier, we might have been able to pull some strings and secure your release. As it was, however, the media attention was already too great, and we’ve had to negotiate with them for years simply to speak with you today.”
“Years. How long has it been, mate?”
“Nearly a decade, I’m afraid.”
Spike swallowed and turned his head away. When he could speak calmly again, he asked, “If you’d known when they first nabbed me, would you lot have tried to free me then?”
Hartley nodded vigorously. “Yes. The Council has long valued your contributions.”
“Well, that’s very nice, but I don’t seem to have any place to pin the medal.” He glanced down significantly at his bare chest. “So if that’s why you’re here, ta and all, you can go on your merry-“
“Cut the crap, both of you!” Both men looked at the Slayer, who’d spoken for the first time. “We didn’t come all the way here to banter.”
“Yeah? So why did you come here, love?”
She glared at him in a way that promised she had a sharpened piece of wood hidden somewhere on her person, ready if she needed it. But he didn’t fear staking, so he smirked at her.
“We have a proposition for you,” she growled.
“Oh?” He lifted one eyebrow suggestively. “Been some time for me, but if you’ll give me a mo to get warmed up-“
“A business proposition!”
“Not buying any. Out of dosh.”
“We were rather more thinking of a trade, Spike.” Hartley’s eyes were an odd grey color, like the ocean before a storm.
“Haven’t anything to trade, either.”
The humans exchanged a look. “Actually, you do,” said the man.
“Yeah? What?”
“It…. This will require a bit of a story.”
“I think I can fit you into my calendar.”
“Very well. You see-“
“Wait.” The woman held up a slim hand. “Can’t he put some clothes on first?”
“’M afraid I’m already wearing my entire wardrobe, pet.”
Both his visitors scowled unhappily at this, and then Hartley looked at his companion questioningly. She rolled her eyes and shrugged. “Fine. Go ahead.”
Spike grinned and settled back as comfortably as he could, as the Watcher began his tale.
“Some years ago-over twenty, I believe-a member of the Council discovered several documents that had been hidden away for many centuries. There had been rumors of these documents before, but nobody was certain that they weren’t just myths, and if they did exist, their precise contents were unclear. But this woman-she was called Nyaga Molefi-actually found them and began to catalog and translate them. They were quite difficult to translate. Some of them were in languages nobody at all could even recognize.
“There was one particularly difficult scroll that Dr. Molefi worked on for years. She had the impression that it was terribly important, but she was only able to get hints of its meaning. She rather obsessed over it, really.
“And then, just a few years ago, she suddenly became very excited. She mentioned to several other members of the Council that she believed she was very close to a breakthrough with the scroll, that she had discovered some means of gaining an understanding of it.
“But then she was murdered.”
The Slayer shifted uncomfortably in her seat. She looked down at her hands, which were clenched tightly on the table.
“Was she your Watcher, then?” Spike asked softly.
She nodded, not meeting his eyes.
“It was quite…quite shocking,” Hartley said, and his voice wavered a bit, as if he hadn’t yet fully recovered. He took a deep breath, steadying himself.
“The people responsible for killing her apparently were trying to make sure that her work was not completed. They attempted to destroy the scroll as well, but Dr. Molefi had placed several strong wards on it, and they were unable even to touch it. It’s a pity she didn’t place those protections on herself as well.”
The Slayer made a small noise and Hartley glanced at her apologetically. “Yes, well, she did tend to place her own well-being much lower than her obligations. In any case,” he continued, “the scroll survived. But we were unable to do anything with it, a quandary that has caused us great consternation indeed.”
Under ordinary circumstances, Spike would have yelled at this tosser to bloody get on with it already. But the more time he took, the longer Spike was out of his cell, and this was by far the most entertainment he’d had in a very long time.
“Since Dr. Molefi’s death we have consulted with a variety of experts to see if we could complete her work. We finally found a demon, actually, an Ytrgantok, who understood a portion of the document and was willing to help us in exchange for some concessions.”
Spike snorted. He’d met Ytrgantok and he had an inkling what those concessions likely had involved. Several tons of dead fish for starters, he’d wager.
Hartley gave a small smile. “The demon proved quite helpful. We learned that the scroll was actually bespelled, and that it would take several unusual items to break the spell and permit the message to be decoded, as it were. Dr. Molefi had evidently got this far, because she was able to accumulate several of those things. We have been working since on the others. But one item has proved…particularly elusive.”
He looked at Spike expectantly.
“And you think I have this thing? Because what you see is what you get, mate. I don’t have any mystical knickknacks stashed away anywhere.” And he lifted an eyebrow as if to suggest the only place he could possibly stash anything. Hartley colored slightly and the Slayer huffed out an irritated puff of air.
“It’s not a knickknack we’re wanting, vampire,” she snapped.
“Then?”
“Your soul.”
He gaped at them wordlessly for some time. They both stared back at him expressionlessly. Finally, he said, “My soul?”
The Watcher nodded. “Yes. We require a human soul.”
“’M not human.”
“No. But your soul is. It belonged to the human you once were.”
Spike blinked at him. “Why mine?”
Hartley shrugged. “Where else are we to get one?”
“Would…would I get it back?”
“I’m afraid not. It would be permanently destroyed.”
“I fought for my soul. Bloody near got myself dusted. Why would I want to give it to you?”
“If you do, we can arrange to make the conditions of your incarceration a great deal more pleasant.”
Spike laughed harshly. “Going to take me to an island with a very nice beach, Clarice?”
“What? I’m afraid I don’t-“
“Never mind. Before your time.”
“We can get you a larger cell, with access to outdoors. A holo screen. Furniture. Clothing. We can-“
“I give up my soul and you’ll treat me like a man, is that it?”
“Spike, we have good reason to believe that your soul will be the key to unlock a prophecy, a prophecy that foretells a coming apocalypse. If we can understand the prophecy, we may be able to stop it.”
Spike was angry now. “I gave my unlife to save the world. I gave my friends to save the world. I gave…almost everything I had. I’ve been doing work for you lot since before your great-grandmum was born. And it’s not enough. You people want the only thing I have left.”
His voice had risen, and a nervous-looking guard appeared in the doorway, shock-stick in his hand. Hartley waved his hand at the guard. “It’s all right. We’re fine. Leave us, please.” The guard glared at Spike and disappeared.
“No. No. You’ve taken enough from me. You’ve…. No. I won’t give this up.” He would have walked out of the room and back to his cell, had he been able. As it was, he fought the urge to change to gameface, to snarl at them through glistening fangs.
“Tell him the rest, Dylan,” the Slayer commanded.
“Very well. There is one more thing we can offer you, Spike.”
“A pile of rotting tuna? Forget it. Not my taste.”
“Companionship.”
“Compan-What? You mean to have a whore come let me fuck her now and then? Because without the soul, I’d drain her.”
“Not a…a…prostitute.” The man looked nervously at his feet. “A vampire, of sorts.”
Spike cocked his head. “You’ll double-cell me with a fellow member of the undead? How many of us do you have locked away?”
“You’re the only one, presently. But…we have it in our power to obtain another. A specific one.”
Spike actually growled slightly. “Will you stop with the games and tell me what you’re bloody on about, already?”
It was the Slayer who answered. “Angelus.”
For the second time in a few minutes, Spike found himself momentarily speechless. “Say again?”
“Angelus. We can bring you Angelus, vampire.”
“Angelus dusted long ago. I was there.”
Hartley nodded. “So he did. But we can bring him back.”
“Bring…bring him back?”
“We are in possession of a ritual that will raise him from hell. You may be familiar with the ritual. Wolfram and Hart used it to resurrect your great-grandsire.”
“All that he did, and you think he’s still in hell?”
“We know he is, vampire,” the Slayer said. “Did you really think a few years of playing hero was going to save him?”
Spike sighed, suddenly terribly weary. “No. I didn’t.” But he had secretly hoped otherwise. “Look, if you can bring Peaches back, why not take his soul? He sheds the thing like a snake sheds its skin. Just have to get him a proper shagging.”
The Watcher shook his head. “If we bring him back, he’ll be human, Spike. And not so easily separable from his soul.”
Spike had forgotten that bit. Angel had told him how Darla was human, and then Dru sired her, throwing their entire lineage into an incestuous tangle.
“If you do this, you’ll be potentially preventing a catastrophe, you’ll find your own, erm, living conditions improved, and you’ll be aiding Angelus as well.”
“What would happen to him?”
“He would stay with you.”
“You think he’d be satisfied locked in a cell with me? He’d probably rather stay in hell.”
“I doubt that very much.”
Spike narrowed his eyes at the man. “That’s hardly fair for him. Having to stay locked up. He wasn’t convicted of anything, and he’ll be a real boy.”
“We’ve discussed this at length with the Americans. If we were to release him, they’d only try him as they did you. His past crimes were worse than yours.”
Spike shook his head. “And then he spent years as a sodding hero. It’s not right.”
“We’re trying to save the world, Spike.”
Spike bit at his lip. Not like he should expect the Council to be Boy Scouts. They always were a devious lot. Cold. Willing to do whatever they had to to achieve their goals. He had a sudden memory of Robin Wood and a garage full of crosses, and he shivered.
“Well?” demanded Lucy Cherukuri. “This is the best offer you’ll get. If you don’t take it, we’ll find a way to get your soul without your permission.”
Spike glared at her. But truly, he found himself battling tears. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t-
Fuck.
What did it matter?
He shut his eyes for a minute.
“All right,” he said.
Chapter Four
Chapter: 3. Those Angels, Forever Falling, Snare Us
Author: whichclothes
Fandom: BtVS/AtS
Pairing (if any): Spike/Angel
Rating: PG-13
Author's Note: This fic has 7 chapters, which I'll be posting over the next few days. It was based on the following prompt from maharet83, a lyric from Leonard Cohen's song, The Law:
Now the deal has been dirty
Since dirty began
I'm not asking for mercy
Not from the man
You just don't ask for mercy
While you're still on the stand
There's a Law, there's an Arm, there's a Hand
I don't claim to be guilty
Guilty's too grand
Thank you to faketoysoldierfor the wonderful banners! Previous chapters here.
I always really appreciate feedback. :-)
Chapter Three
Those Angels, Forever Falling, Snare Us
My mother laughs
At the angels who wait for us to pause
During the most ordinary of days
And sing our praise to forgetfulness
Before they slap our souls with their cold wings.
Those angels burden and unbalance us.
Those fucking angels ride us piggyback.
Those angels, forever falling, snare us
And haul us, prey and praying, into dust.
--Sherman Alexie, Grief Calls Us to the Things of the World
When the door opened, he was so startled he froze in shock. He’d almost forgotten there was a door there at all.
A guard beckoned him out and he came slowly, warily as a frightened fawn. He blinked in the harsh lights of the corridor, trying to keep his equilibrium amidst the sudden onslaught of sensory input.
The guards shackled him and took him away. They had gone through three separate locked barriers before it occurred to him that nobody had ordered him not to speak. “Where…where are we going?” he asked, his voice cracked and hesitant.
“Visitors,” said one of the men, prodding him forward.
Visitors? He didn’t think he was permitted any. And who would come to see him? He had no one.
They brought him to a small room with a metal table. There were two chairs on one side of the table, one on the other. They told him to sit and then they locked his wrists and ankles to his chair.
One of the guards, an older-looking bloke with a tattoo of an eagle on his forehead, leaned in close. He smelled of cut grass. Perhaps he’d mowed his lawn before he came to work today.
“You behave yourself, you hear?” he growled. “You act up, we’ll run you right back to that hole for good, and no more books, either. Got it?”
Spike nodded meekly. Jesus, what if they took away his books?
The guards gave him a final glare and then left. He waited a while. This room was warmer than his cell, and his body sucked in the heat gratefully. He heard footsteps and the door swung open.
Two people came in. Spike’s nostrils flared as soon as he scented them. One of them-a bird who looked perhaps thirty-was a Slayer. The other carried the unmistakable old paper and dust smell of a Watcher. Spike eyed them guardedly as they sat across from them. They both seemed taken aback by his nudity.
“Erm, Mr. Pratt, we’ve-“
“Spike. My name is Spike.”
The Watcher cleared his throat. “I do apologize. Spike. I’m Dylan Hartley, and this is Lucy Cherukuri.” He nearly put out his hand to shake, then thought better of it. “We’re-“
“Watcher and Slayer.”
“Precisely. Mr., erm, Spike, I must begin by begging your forgiveness. The Council wasn’t aware you’d been taken into custody until the trial began, and by then it was rather too late to explain to the Americans who you were.”
“I reckon they knew perfectly well who I am. That’s why they keep me locked up.”
“Yes, well, if we’d known earlier, we might have been able to pull some strings and secure your release. As it was, however, the media attention was already too great, and we’ve had to negotiate with them for years simply to speak with you today.”
“Years. How long has it been, mate?”
“Nearly a decade, I’m afraid.”
Spike swallowed and turned his head away. When he could speak calmly again, he asked, “If you’d known when they first nabbed me, would you lot have tried to free me then?”
Hartley nodded vigorously. “Yes. The Council has long valued your contributions.”
“Well, that’s very nice, but I don’t seem to have any place to pin the medal.” He glanced down significantly at his bare chest. “So if that’s why you’re here, ta and all, you can go on your merry-“
“Cut the crap, both of you!” Both men looked at the Slayer, who’d spoken for the first time. “We didn’t come all the way here to banter.”
“Yeah? So why did you come here, love?”
She glared at him in a way that promised she had a sharpened piece of wood hidden somewhere on her person, ready if she needed it. But he didn’t fear staking, so he smirked at her.
“We have a proposition for you,” she growled.
“Oh?” He lifted one eyebrow suggestively. “Been some time for me, but if you’ll give me a mo to get warmed up-“
“A business proposition!”
“Not buying any. Out of dosh.”
“We were rather more thinking of a trade, Spike.” Hartley’s eyes were an odd grey color, like the ocean before a storm.
“Haven’t anything to trade, either.”
The humans exchanged a look. “Actually, you do,” said the man.
“Yeah? What?”
“It…. This will require a bit of a story.”
“I think I can fit you into my calendar.”
“Very well. You see-“
“Wait.” The woman held up a slim hand. “Can’t he put some clothes on first?”
“’M afraid I’m already wearing my entire wardrobe, pet.”
Both his visitors scowled unhappily at this, and then Hartley looked at his companion questioningly. She rolled her eyes and shrugged. “Fine. Go ahead.”
Spike grinned and settled back as comfortably as he could, as the Watcher began his tale.
“Some years ago-over twenty, I believe-a member of the Council discovered several documents that had been hidden away for many centuries. There had been rumors of these documents before, but nobody was certain that they weren’t just myths, and if they did exist, their precise contents were unclear. But this woman-she was called Nyaga Molefi-actually found them and began to catalog and translate them. They were quite difficult to translate. Some of them were in languages nobody at all could even recognize.
“There was one particularly difficult scroll that Dr. Molefi worked on for years. She had the impression that it was terribly important, but she was only able to get hints of its meaning. She rather obsessed over it, really.
“And then, just a few years ago, she suddenly became very excited. She mentioned to several other members of the Council that she believed she was very close to a breakthrough with the scroll, that she had discovered some means of gaining an understanding of it.
“But then she was murdered.”
The Slayer shifted uncomfortably in her seat. She looked down at her hands, which were clenched tightly on the table.
“Was she your Watcher, then?” Spike asked softly.
She nodded, not meeting his eyes.
“It was quite…quite shocking,” Hartley said, and his voice wavered a bit, as if he hadn’t yet fully recovered. He took a deep breath, steadying himself.
“The people responsible for killing her apparently were trying to make sure that her work was not completed. They attempted to destroy the scroll as well, but Dr. Molefi had placed several strong wards on it, and they were unable even to touch it. It’s a pity she didn’t place those protections on herself as well.”
The Slayer made a small noise and Hartley glanced at her apologetically. “Yes, well, she did tend to place her own well-being much lower than her obligations. In any case,” he continued, “the scroll survived. But we were unable to do anything with it, a quandary that has caused us great consternation indeed.”
Under ordinary circumstances, Spike would have yelled at this tosser to bloody get on with it already. But the more time he took, the longer Spike was out of his cell, and this was by far the most entertainment he’d had in a very long time.
“Since Dr. Molefi’s death we have consulted with a variety of experts to see if we could complete her work. We finally found a demon, actually, an Ytrgantok, who understood a portion of the document and was willing to help us in exchange for some concessions.”
Spike snorted. He’d met Ytrgantok and he had an inkling what those concessions likely had involved. Several tons of dead fish for starters, he’d wager.
Hartley gave a small smile. “The demon proved quite helpful. We learned that the scroll was actually bespelled, and that it would take several unusual items to break the spell and permit the message to be decoded, as it were. Dr. Molefi had evidently got this far, because she was able to accumulate several of those things. We have been working since on the others. But one item has proved…particularly elusive.”
He looked at Spike expectantly.
“And you think I have this thing? Because what you see is what you get, mate. I don’t have any mystical knickknacks stashed away anywhere.” And he lifted an eyebrow as if to suggest the only place he could possibly stash anything. Hartley colored slightly and the Slayer huffed out an irritated puff of air.
“It’s not a knickknack we’re wanting, vampire,” she snapped.
“Then?”
“Your soul.”
He gaped at them wordlessly for some time. They both stared back at him expressionlessly. Finally, he said, “My soul?”
The Watcher nodded. “Yes. We require a human soul.”
“’M not human.”
“No. But your soul is. It belonged to the human you once were.”
Spike blinked at him. “Why mine?”
Hartley shrugged. “Where else are we to get one?”
“Would…would I get it back?”
“I’m afraid not. It would be permanently destroyed.”
“I fought for my soul. Bloody near got myself dusted. Why would I want to give it to you?”
“If you do, we can arrange to make the conditions of your incarceration a great deal more pleasant.”
Spike laughed harshly. “Going to take me to an island with a very nice beach, Clarice?”
“What? I’m afraid I don’t-“
“Never mind. Before your time.”
“We can get you a larger cell, with access to outdoors. A holo screen. Furniture. Clothing. We can-“
“I give up my soul and you’ll treat me like a man, is that it?”
“Spike, we have good reason to believe that your soul will be the key to unlock a prophecy, a prophecy that foretells a coming apocalypse. If we can understand the prophecy, we may be able to stop it.”
Spike was angry now. “I gave my unlife to save the world. I gave my friends to save the world. I gave…almost everything I had. I’ve been doing work for you lot since before your great-grandmum was born. And it’s not enough. You people want the only thing I have left.”
His voice had risen, and a nervous-looking guard appeared in the doorway, shock-stick in his hand. Hartley waved his hand at the guard. “It’s all right. We’re fine. Leave us, please.” The guard glared at Spike and disappeared.
“No. No. You’ve taken enough from me. You’ve…. No. I won’t give this up.” He would have walked out of the room and back to his cell, had he been able. As it was, he fought the urge to change to gameface, to snarl at them through glistening fangs.
“Tell him the rest, Dylan,” the Slayer commanded.
“Very well. There is one more thing we can offer you, Spike.”
“A pile of rotting tuna? Forget it. Not my taste.”
“Companionship.”
“Compan-What? You mean to have a whore come let me fuck her now and then? Because without the soul, I’d drain her.”
“Not a…a…prostitute.” The man looked nervously at his feet. “A vampire, of sorts.”
Spike cocked his head. “You’ll double-cell me with a fellow member of the undead? How many of us do you have locked away?”
“You’re the only one, presently. But…we have it in our power to obtain another. A specific one.”
Spike actually growled slightly. “Will you stop with the games and tell me what you’re bloody on about, already?”
It was the Slayer who answered. “Angelus.”
For the second time in a few minutes, Spike found himself momentarily speechless. “Say again?”
“Angelus. We can bring you Angelus, vampire.”
“Angelus dusted long ago. I was there.”
Hartley nodded. “So he did. But we can bring him back.”
“Bring…bring him back?”
“We are in possession of a ritual that will raise him from hell. You may be familiar with the ritual. Wolfram and Hart used it to resurrect your great-grandsire.”
“All that he did, and you think he’s still in hell?”
“We know he is, vampire,” the Slayer said. “Did you really think a few years of playing hero was going to save him?”
Spike sighed, suddenly terribly weary. “No. I didn’t.” But he had secretly hoped otherwise. “Look, if you can bring Peaches back, why not take his soul? He sheds the thing like a snake sheds its skin. Just have to get him a proper shagging.”
The Watcher shook his head. “If we bring him back, he’ll be human, Spike. And not so easily separable from his soul.”
Spike had forgotten that bit. Angel had told him how Darla was human, and then Dru sired her, throwing their entire lineage into an incestuous tangle.
“If you do this, you’ll be potentially preventing a catastrophe, you’ll find your own, erm, living conditions improved, and you’ll be aiding Angelus as well.”
“What would happen to him?”
“He would stay with you.”
“You think he’d be satisfied locked in a cell with me? He’d probably rather stay in hell.”
“I doubt that very much.”
Spike narrowed his eyes at the man. “That’s hardly fair for him. Having to stay locked up. He wasn’t convicted of anything, and he’ll be a real boy.”
“We’ve discussed this at length with the Americans. If we were to release him, they’d only try him as they did you. His past crimes were worse than yours.”
Spike shook his head. “And then he spent years as a sodding hero. It’s not right.”
“We’re trying to save the world, Spike.”
Spike bit at his lip. Not like he should expect the Council to be Boy Scouts. They always were a devious lot. Cold. Willing to do whatever they had to to achieve their goals. He had a sudden memory of Robin Wood and a garage full of crosses, and he shivered.
“Well?” demanded Lucy Cherukuri. “This is the best offer you’ll get. If you don’t take it, we’ll find a way to get your soul without your permission.”
Spike glared at her. But truly, he found himself battling tears. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t-
Fuck.
What did it matter?
He shut his eyes for a minute.
“All right,” he said.
Chapter Four