Paradise Lost

by Sharibet-too

(A 2nd Season alternate-universe story set directly after A More Permanent Hell, with mild adult content. May be offensive to Nick&Nat partisans.)

written August 10, 1995

(quotes from Book IX, by John Milton)

"Twilight upon the Earth..."

At the astronomer's house, Nick stood with Schanke, listening to the sirens as the government tried to get the message of the hoax out on every channel. They watched the uniforms drive off in their black and white with the stockbroker who had tried to play God, lying to the world for his own gain.

"What some people will do for money, eh, Nick?" Schanke said, ruefully. "Good call on this one, partner. Thanks for keeping your head, 'When all around you...'" He stuffed his hands in his pockets. "What a crazy world."

"Yeah," Nick replied, fishing his portable phone out and pressing the auto-dial number for the Raven. "Janette? Any word yet... about...?" Schanke frowned as Nick's expression darkened. Nick said, "Well, call me right away if--" and then snatched the phone from his ear, as if he'd heard some loud sound through it.

"She hang up on you?" Schanke smirked. "Myra does that to me when I forget to say 'please.'"

"She is too your friend," Nick said to the dead phone, and absently folded it. "And I hope mine, still."

"Something else wrong, now that we've saved the world?" Schanke asked jauntily, heading for the Caddy.

"No. I don't think so," Nick said, clambering into the driver's seat and holding the wheel with suddenly shaking hands. "I don't think so..."

But across the night sky of his red eyelid-vision, there was a flash of light, exploding like a fireball, as if his world had indeed collided with some immovable object and been left for dust, scattered amidst the imperishable stars.

* * *

"...Sin and her shadow Death, and Misery,

Death's harbinger."

For an instant, as she slashed the vase? lamp? semi-cylindrical object against the vampire, Spark, and slammed her apartment door shut, the desperate hope that she might escape him after all burst through the veil of numbing alcohol. She had drunk too much-- smoked!-- and dabbled her toes in a pond full of sharks. She had brought one home with her-- had told him, "You can have me-- if you bring me across." And it wouldn't even matter if he didn't keep his side of the bargain-- there wouldn't be a tomorrow, and Nick had refused her--

Oh, god, he was on the other side of the door, turning the knob...

She ran into the safe haven of her bedroom, and shut this flimsy door, too. It was only wood, why did she even bother? He could break right through it. Why had she been so stupid? She had to think, but it was so hard, with all the soapsuds and beerfoam in her brain-- what did she have that she could use against him--?

She turned around and he was there, seizing her shoulders, smiling lazily at her, huge white teeth in a Cheshire-shark smile, black eyes wider than the night sky drowning in comets' tails and meteoric splendor.

"I'll show you I can do it with style," he purred, and tenderly lowered her to the bed. Her bed. Her ruffled bedspread. Her skin, roughened with welts of goose-bumps where his icy fingers traveled, her neck where his lips pressed against the artery jumping with her blood from her heart, working overtime to get the fuel to rebellious limbs-- her limbs, that ought to be working together to run-- She had to get away--

But his hands tangled in her hair, and his hair brushed like velvet across her skin, and his beard was as soft as his kisses. She panted and convulsively tried to sit up-- but he was heavy on her, holding her effortlessly like a quilted down-filled comforter. He had once meant comfort, to her. He had promised her, a stranger, his immortal kiss. She had offered him herself.

'I wanted Nick!' her heart wailed as this stranger kissed her, tasting her lips with his tongue, caressing her intimately as if he had every right--"You promised," he whispered, as if he could already read her thoughts.

And she had, God help her.

Oh, God. What did it matter? The world was coming to an end. Nick didn't want her-- he never had. He hadn't wanted the responsibility for her brother Richard, either, and look where that had ended up. Oh, Richie... a flash of light and you were ash... A flash of light and the whole world is dust...

Spark's tongue in her mouth tasted of wine, and blood. At least it wasn't dust. She put her arms around him. He wasn't ash. He wasn't blond, either. He wasn't her friend--

But he would be her master. If she made it back across.

Sirens sounded all over the city, signaling more doom. Spark raised his head, and she could see the hellish glow in his eyes, could almost feel that yellow heat coming from them. His lips curled in a snarl, showing his predatory teeth.

She threw her head back. Let it be now. Let it be done, and over with...

The pain of his bite was overwhelmed instantly by the agony of life being ripped from her flesh as if by tiny serrated knives carving her body everywhere. He wasn't sucking her blood, he was eating her, shredding her skin and bones altogether--

And she couldn't even scream, because her muscles were gone, ground away, like powder, like ash... there was a flash of light, and she was dust.

* * *

"...this new favorite of heaven,

This man of clay..."

Nick paced back and forth in the crowded coroner's office, surrounded by the pale bodies of the numerous dead. Two days worth of cleaning up the aftermath, and still no word of Natalie. He had flown to her apartment shortly after ditching Don for the night, but there was no sign of her there, except for a drop of her blood upon the pillow.

Not very old, but very potent, the scent of her blood had filled his senses. His eyes burned hot, and his hunger rose up and beat for an aching instant against the confining bars of his will.

'But God left free the will; for what obeys/ Reason is free; and reason he made right...' The phrase from Milton echoed in his mind, and he subdued the beast-- again, as he was damned to do forever, until he could find his cure. He had fled her place, praying for her safety, as he still prayed, hoping God would listen and answer; not for his sake, it was too late for his damned soul, but for her...

She hadn't returned to the morgue, though he had come here often, looking for her.

Where was Natalie? She was his hope of freedom-- she couldn't still be angry with him for refusing to bring her across? She must know what a foolish, futile solution that would be. She'd seen how her brother had failed--

Movement behind him-- he spun, ready to kill and feed from the unwary prey--

He blinked hard. "Grace--?" he choked, seeing Natalie's large assistant frozen in the act of dropping half a hundred neatly typed-out forms. Her warm brown face was gray with terror, focused on him--

"D-Detective Knight?" Grace asked, her voice trembling. "How-- how'd you do that?" There were large dark purple half-circles of fatigue under her eyes.

"Do what, Grace?" he asked back, willing his eyes to go blue again, smiling at her with all the charm he could summon. He bent to pick up the scattered papers and handed them to her with a courtly flourish.

She almost didn't take them from him. Her heart was beating very fast, and she wouldn't look directly at him. "N-nothing."

"Have you heard from Natalie yet?" he asked, not expecting any more of an answer this time than the last seven times he'd asked. But he had to keep on hoping. Had to...

Grace shuffled the papers back into a semblance of order, keeping her eyes on her task. At last she had the mass into a haphazard grouping of odd corners and bent edges, and was fruitlessly trying to tamp one length into a straight line. "She--we got a message from her earlier--"

"You did! She's okay!" Nick felt like dancing, or shouting with relief. She was all right. 'Thank You for Your mercy!' he thought, before the anger surged back. "What did she mean, not calling in until tonight? Didn't she know we were worried sick about her?"

"She said--" Grace gulped. "She...was sorry to run out like that, but...you know... what with the meteor madness... she wasn't thinking straight."

"Where did she go? Where is she now? Will she be in later?" Nick felt a prickle of uneasiness at the continued fright in Grace's face, like the first tendrils of electricity leaping up from the ground into the heart of a thundercloud, ready to pull down the lighting.

Grace pushed the papers together again, wrinkling them further. "Nick--" Her heart pounded harder, like thunder in both their ears. "The message said that she...eloped."

Eloped!! Whom would she elope with? How could she elope without him??

How could lightning strike without pain? Nick wondered, as the brilliance shattered all around him.

* * *

"Subtle he needs must be who could seduce

Angels--"

Spark held her tightly as she thrashed in the throes of her hunger pangs, wishing he had time to brush back her hair, settle her clothing comfortably around her, and whisper sweet nothings in her ear. But she was too hungry to listen, and the free-feeding time was over far too soon; the mortals had already started picking up the pieces of their world, and keeping track again of every sparrow falling out of heaven. At least he'd been able to find out where she worked from her wallet in her purse so he could call them and keep them from sending out cops after her.

Cops. Jeez. She worked with them all the time. A corpse-doctor. No wonder she'd been so brazen with her invitation. And so beautiful, so tempting. How could he have resisted her, even if he'd known?

He would have sighed, but Natalie's head butted into his stomach with brutal force, and he returned his full attention to her.

"Here, sweetheart," he crooned, offering her a bottle of Janette's finest, willing her to drink, and ease her cravings, and rest. Give him a rest. He'd kept his promise to her, and now look at her, weeping and carrying on, and refusing his help-- she was being such a pain, really, that he didn't know why he even bothered.

Except they were...connected...now.

He felt the bond between them, the one that he'd made when he made Natalie his convert. She was his, now. Lover. Sister. Daughter. He ached with her pain, her wild longings for something different.

Someone different.

He hadn't guessed from her demeanor at the club ("You're a nice boy!") that she had been attached to... someone else. How could he have guessed? She'd offered herself, and gotten predictably scared when it came time to pay; and he had accepted her offering, and kept his side of the bargain.

Some bargain. She tried to bite him, and he almost let her, knowing she would come around at the taste of blood; but his blood would be too powerful for her at this stage. She needed to start off easier, getting used to pabulum before she tried the good stuff...

She sobbed, frustrated, and tried to throw the bottle he pushed into her hand against the scarred, stained wall. "No! Why did you do this to me?" she sobbed. "Why did I let you? I won't! I won't!"

"Hush, darlin'," he said soothingly. "It's all right now. You asked for this, but we're in it together. Drink, now."

"No! Why? Why did you do this?"

He did smooth back her hair as she wept, clinging to him, her nails stinging sharp as puppy-claws. "Shhh. It's okay. I'm here."

"Why?"

He kissed her as her tears ran dry. "Didn't you think I could be lonely, too?"

* * *

"Not then mistrust, but tender love..."

Hours of wracking pain, of tension wrapped in veils of daylight, or lightning, or mind-numbing clouds; the sounds of rushing waters-- no, that was the blood in her ears. The slow tolling of a bell-- no, that was her heartbeat. Or his. The roaring thunder of the walls, creaking with the weight of beam and roof, raindrops, air... Scritching vermin in the wainscoting, eating the walls away... The hollowness of pain, eating her from the inside out.

Why had she thought this pain was worth eternal life? This wasn't living! She wasn't human, anymore, any more than a rat, or a cockroach, or a thousand gnawing worms... She wanted to bite, and tear, and suck until all the juices were gone-- but she knew, with the last tattered remnants of her reason, that if she drank a drop of anything, she would be lost, banished to the underworld forever, Persephone without a springtime...

And so, when he thrust the bottle at her, time after time, she raged, and fought him, and screamed out her resistance, until, as she'd known it must happen, she grew too tired to resist.

He was so gentle with her; that's what she resented most, she thought, before the bottle's tip rested carefully on her lip, and the sweet red taste crashed against her tongue, invading her mouth, soaking into the hunger as if drawn through huge pores before she could even swallow. Then satisfaction eliminated every other thought. She floated in a sea of blood, borne on a tide of sensation, filled up by the essence of life, and anchored by the strongest of ties. The lightest of ties, unbreakable and dangerous as molecular monofilament-- capable of binding the earth to the moon, or slicing fingers off that dared to hold it...

The bottle was empty, and she wanted more. She needed more. He fed her more, until she was full and could not hold another drop. She twitched, almost unable to move.

"That's my good girl," he said, stroking her hair the way she would have petted Sydney. "There'll be more later."

She clenched her eyes, already shut, and tried not to feel the misery, the shame of her degraded ruin. She struck blindly at him, feeling her hand connect loosely with his face, sickeningly aware that he felt her fingers caress his cheek, his soft beard, intrigued despite her horror at the thought of feeling him feeling her as she touched him. There was so much of him to touch, while the stolen blood surged through her skin, so much of him to be aware of-- touching.

Being touched.

Kissing. Being kissed.

Bonded by an indissoluble tie stronger than death-- "Nick!" A broken memory ran screaming down thought's hallways.

"I'm Spark," her own thought seemed to speak; present, not loud, but quite intense; here, real, as real as the furry tickling of his mustache against her lips.

Kissing back. His mouth. Her mouth. Bodies twined together, no beginning, no end, a world-serpent marking the boundaries of a new universe.

"You're mine now, Natalie. I love you."

Being loved.

Dark waters closed over her head, as she swallowed her own tail, and gave birth to herself, a new entity, half of 'Natalie and Spark.' The sun stood still in the firmament, and the judgement day had been averted.

* * *

"Daughter of God and Man, Immortal Eve!"

Nick rushed to the Raven as a homing pigeon seeks its cage, knowing no other home, no matter how far away the corner of the earth is that it has been brought to. The rhythmic music simulated beating hearts and was loud enough to cover up the real sounds of hearts beating out of time. Still beating. Still alive. Such tender mercies showed by God to strangers seemed unreal to him, as if he expected the earth should be silent, like a sacred forest after the sound of one ax, chopping. The sound of one glass, sliding over wood.

"Nicola?" Janette's voice, brittle as glass, almost as transparent.

"Who did she go with?" Nick asked unwillingly. He didn't want to know.

He had to know.

"Who, cherie?" Janette pretended prettily. She poured a deep red vintage into the glass, concentrating. She didn't spill a drop, or tremble noticeably. But Nick was in no mood for games, or lies, or polite evasions. He remembered the invincible power he had once held, three foot of heavy sharpened steel clutched in his fist, cleaving bodies of men at his will, forcing compliance by threat of pain, and death, and mutilation. He remembered full well how to use a sword.

He didn't need one, anymore. His gaze alone was sword enough.

Janette refused to look at him, staring at the glass as if at an oracle. Her pouting lips remained silent as she stirred the wine with one delicate finger.

He grabbed her arm, fury replacing the caution he usually showed while on her territory, ignoring the threatening presence of her bodyguards, her bouncers, as they converged. "Call them off, ma belle," he warned.

She tossed her head, dispersing the faithful contingent without a word. They faded back into the crowd, staring at him hard enough to wound, just a reminder of their vigilance. She rebuked his cruel grip on her arm with a flicker of her eyelashes, but he didn't let her go. He'd had enough of her meddling, her betrayal.

"Who took her?" His voice was not a pleasant sound.

She smiled at him, and her pleasure in his pain was the rejoicing of flesh, tearing free of deep-set hooks. "I don't know his real name," she said coyly. "He's young-- romantic--" She hissed a little as his grip tightened, but her smile continued brilliant-- almost as brilliant as her eyes, fastened now on his. "He calls himself 'Spark'-- I don't know where he lives. He comes here, sometimes, and in this last unpleasantness..." She shrugged, Gallic, fatalistic, and smiled more widely still. "I don't think I can help you, this time, Nicola. Not even if you break my arm."

"I can find more tender bones to break, Janette," he offered. He recognized the whisper as Lacroix's as soon as she did.

"I know," she said, using only her own voice, taut and full of pain. "You always do. I'm sorry for her, Nicola. But you never get the picture-- They're all doomed. You may have lifted off the latest sword of Damocles-- and very clever it was of you, too-- but you must accept this. She was mortal. Revenge for her death will gain you nothing."

He let her go, disgusted. She didn't know anything. He stood up abruptly. "What revenge shall I take for his eloping with her?" he snarled, just to see surprise overtake her beautiful face. "What revenge is good enough to punish him for bringing her across? Are you feeling creative tonight?"

"No! Nicola! NO!" she shouted weakly, but he was halfway across the writhing field of dancers, his coat billowing out behind him like a cape, or a mantle, covering mail. His fingers flexed, remembering the shape of a sword hilt, its weight, its authority. He carried a gun, now, and a badge.

What good were they?

* * *

"Seek not temptation..."

"Spark? I don't believe I know him..." Felix said, twirling his moustache.

"Nicholas, I don't tell--" Aristotle squeaked.

"Leave your number at the tone, and I'll get back to you in the morning," Larry Merlin's answering machine lied.

"Oh, Nicky, it's so good to see you again," Alma cooed, opening the door to her flat. "You beautiful hunk of something or other--" She batted her eyes. "Of course I know Sparky." She smiled as she closed the door, and popped her gum. "What's it to ya? Oh--!"

He pressed her hard against the wall, leaning into her curves with the planes of his body, trapping her with his strength. ('My strength is the strength of ten, because my heart is pure!' a devilish voice sang in his head, mocking him, as all men must.) "I want to know where he lives," Nick growled. "Tell me now, pretty, innocent Soul, and I'll remember you kindly."

"Wow, Nick-- you're really mad, aren'tcha? What'd he do?"

As his eyes blazed, and his teeth emerged with aching force, she stiffened in suddenly cognizant fear.

"Hey-- sorry I asked," she said breathily, "I just-- he lives in Etobico'--"

"Where?"

"I dunno-- ow! Come on, Nicky, be a sport."

"Do you know his real name?"

She took a squashed breath. "Somethin' Italian--" She stopped squirming, and said clearly, "I forget so easily when I'm being intimidated..."

Nick stepped back reluctantly.

Alma fluffed up the hair on the back of her head. "Italian. Vaca-- something-- Don't rush me!"

He restrained his snarl this time. He was too close now to screw up.

"Cavalieri-- yeah, that was it. Tony, well probably Antonio or something--"

"Thank you, Alma," he said gently, kissing her pink lipstick briefly. "I will remember you kindly."

She called after him as he departed: "Come back some time, when you're in a better mood, honey, and we'll do some tonsil tango-- okay?"

* * *

"...trial will come unsought..."

But when Nick got to Spark's apartment in the peaceful suburb, he wasn't there. Nobody was home, and no one had been there for weeks.

It wasn't an empty shell; there were remnants of a life as eclectic and absurd as his own; thousands of records, CDs and videos lining the walls; books and electronic gear and potted plants stacked up on the floor; a beautifully replicated Civil War uniform hanging resplendently in the closet, with a sepia-tone daguerreotype of a plain young woman with sausage curls tucked in one pocket.

Nothing incriminating. Nothing that would give him away.

He even had real food in his refrigerator, with a note from his service saying, "Thank you for your donations to the Food Bank this week."

Nick slammed the plastic door shut, cutting off the pale white light. This was futile. This was aggravating. He was already too late. '...hate, not love, nor hope/Of Paradise for Hell, hope here to taste/Of pleasure, but all pleasure to destroy,/Save what is in destroying; other joy/To me is lost.'

Damn all poets, anyway. They saw too well, and spoke too sure, of things they should not know.

"Does the shoe pinch, when it's on the other foot?" Lacroix asked in that deceptively mild tone he cultivated.

Nick held himself from flinching. He had not heard his master enter. Lacroix might have been there all along, watching invisibly, or just this moment entered through some temporally temporary skylight. It didn't matter. "You put him up to this, didn't you?" Nick accused wearily.

"I?" Lacroix smiled with poisoned sweetness. "The joy of this particular encounter, for me, is precisely that I did not. I had no hand in this whatsoever. Your downfall, this time, is quite spectacularly and solitarily your own. I must say I appreciate the show, however."

His smile changed, encompassing one cheek as he dipped his head, then thrust out his hand, theatrically indicating the vacant clutter. "We await only the remaining dramatis personae-- the masks of the action, that is. I find myself quite impatient to see what you will do. I am certain it will be... entertaining."

"Go to Hell!" Nick cursed.

"Ah, but we've just established that I cannot, eh, Nicholas?" Lacroix said, not smiling now at all. "Spark! Come home!" he commanded, as if to an errant spirit of wind at his beck and call. Then he smiled again. "He'll be here soon. Would you like a glass of wine?"

Nick only shook his head.

* * *

"The way which to her ruin now I tend..."

"Where are we going?" Natalie asked dazedly, as the air whipped past her ears, tangling her hair. Spark was carrying her, flying. And there was a part of her that knew how to fly, too.

"We're going to my place," Spark said. "We'd kinda stayed past our welcome, at my friend's house. You'll like my place, though."

"What if I want to go home?" she asked, hating the dependence she felt. Why couldn't she just say-- 'I want to go home. Let me go home. Let me go. I want--'

He smiled at her, fondly proud, his teeth so white against the black border of his beard. "Me-e-e... and my sha-a-a-dow..." he sang, "Strollin' down the a-a-avennue," and changing tunes midair, "I want you! I want you! I want you! oh oh oh I need you! I need you! I need you!" and he spun around in a circle, tap-dancing on nothing, "You are so-o beautiful... to me-e-e-e."

And then he laughed, and she heard the happiness there. "Did I tell you how wonderful you are?" he asked.

"I... think so," she said drily. Only about a thousand times. He would have been boring, if he hadn't been so damn' sincere. "But if you feel like it, you can say it again."

"You're wonderful!"

And the funny, awful part was-- she knew he meant it. She could feel him, touching her, bonded, dizzy with newborn love and the reckless joy of togetherness; and she couldn't help responding.

His laugh was infectious. Not a morbid infection she might die of, but a divine madness she almost wanted to catch hold of, and climb up like a magical Indian rope trick into an upper air wonderland of magic, roses, and happily-ever-after.

She smiled, and he whirled around again. "You'll see. We'll be good together. Is this style, or is this style?" He dipped, and gave her a 180-degree glimpse of Toronto underfoot. "Your very own magic carpet ride," he said. "This is the first day of the rest of forever," he promised.

And in the chilly midnight air, she should have shivered, but she laughed with him instead.

Touching.

Touched.

They had to love each other. They were too close not to.

* * *

"...by the Tree

of Knowledge he must pass..."

"Spark," Lacroix said conversationally as Spark opened his apartment door. "You took your time."

Natalie grabbed his coat sleeve, staggering onto her feet as he set her down. "What's he doing here?".

He could only try to convey his love, his protectiveness, through their bond. He could not, at first, speak. "Hello, Lacroix," he said when he could swallow again. The age of the creature awed him still. The coldness of him abraded Spark's soul, or what was left of it. "You rang?" The old joke made the ancient vampire sneer.

"Actually..." He bowed slightly in Natalie's direction. "But you must introduce me to your lovely companion," he ordered.

Natalie's gasp, and the thrill of recognition, hatred, and reluctant admiration that she felt, went through him like a burning coal through snow. "I know him!" she admitted as Spark looked at her. "I remember now."

She shared the memory-- "You are exquisite." A background of fronds, elegance, food, the numbing glaze of champagne laced with something stronger, "...beautiful things he said to me..." cold breath on her neck; an impression of violent movement against a fixed, skewed background. "I do not love this woman." "Your hypocrisy sickens me." And the smothering devourment of lips, and hands, and body-- all of her wanted him with desperate longing, but not THAT way-- "You never loved... She is not worth..." Tenderness, and blackness...

"He hurt you, but that's all over now," Spark promised her, his toy, his child. His beloved. "You're mine."

"Spark."

Spark cleared his throat, and straightened into his childhood's etiquette. "Master Lucien Lacroix, may I present Doctor Natalie Lambert?"

"Such a pleasure," Lacroix purred. "Natalie. I welcome you to our... community." He inclined his head, stately and benign. "I'm sure you're acquainted with my... protege. Nicholas de Brabant." His hand rose, fingers flat together, and waved majestically in the direction of a blond statue with burning blue eyes.

"Nick," she said faintly.

"Nicholas, let me introduce you to a... young friend of mine. Antony Cavalieri. Ah, but you're both... knights." Lacroix smiled, showing sharp teeth.

Spark nodded tightly at Nick, who only stared, rude, resentful.

Natalie began to tremble in his arms. "Nick?!"

Nick shook, too. He stood as if chained in place. "Nat-- I'm so sorry-- I didn't know--"

Words put animation into his bland, handsome face. Spark matched the memories: blond; not tall, but taller than she was; Hands on her. "Let the lady alone! She said 'No!'" Fangs in front of her face-- his low voice:"Nat. What are we gonna do about this-- about the way we feel?" Desperate longing...

He was the one. He was the one she really loved.

Pain tore through Spark. She hadn't loved him at all, even the least little bit. She'd come to him for her own reasons, with her own agenda. She had only wanted to use him-- "You can have me-- if you bring me across." "Why? Why did you do this to me?" He was only a stepping stone, for her. But he couldn't bring himself to hate her. She was too close, too beautiful. His child.

"It's the blood," he whispered to her. "It's the blood that binds us together. I understand. It's not really you, loving me, or me, loving you. It's the blood."

He should be happy for her. He should rejoice, that she had found her true love-- now, with no impediment of hateful mortality.

Happy the instrument of that deliverance, he admonished himself. "Go to him," he told her. "It's okay with me."

But when she took her first step toward the other vampire, he felt as if there were a cable clamped around her ankle, anchored in his chest, and she towed his heart out when she moved.

He opened his hands, and embraced the pain.

* * *

"Bone of my bone thou art..."

Nick watched her, incredulous joy shining in his eyes, mingled with a vast amorphous sadness, like the blaze of sunlight on a restless sea. "I would have saved you," he said, smiling fatuously as she stood before him, opening his arms to fold her in.

She slapped his face, hard. "You little piece of... brick!" she yelled. "You lied to me. You shut me out! You would have let me die!" She hit him again. "You would have killed me," she sobbed. "You messed with my memories, you louse!" She was hyperventilating, her whole body vibrating with the rage she had never let herself feel before.

At Azure, after Lacroix had left, Nick had mentally undressed her, fondled her mind, and left some buttons loose. She punched at him, but her blow glanced off his defending forearm.

Where had she ever gotten the idea she could trust this creep? And how had she ever thought that infatuation with him could be love?

She'd never known real love until... she didn't need to look at Spark. Touching. Touched.

"And you suck face really bad," she added, scathingly, to the bent figure gaping at her.

Lacroix smiled twistedly as she asked him, "What do you see in him? He's such a loser."

"One grows... attached," he said. "What a pleasant visit this has been, to be sure," he added to Spark. "I suppose we'll be leaving you now, to let you resume the... honeymoon."

"Bye!" said Spark.

"Natalie!" Nick gasped. "You can't-- how can you--?"

"Come along, Nicholas," Lacroix said. "We've outstayed our welcome."

* * *

"...Those heavenly shapes

Will dazzle now this earthly with their blaze

Insufferably bright."

Their departure left his apartment feeling almost empty, like a landscape feels empty after the passage of the hurricane.

"Antony?" Natalie said in a questioning tone of voice.

He went to her side instantly, and held her close. "Yes, beloved?"

"That's your name?"

He kissed her. "One of them. I've had a few. It's fun. Choose a new name. Choose a new you. Lately I've been... just Spark. Call me anything you like." Call me...beloved.

"Beloved," she echoed. "Antony. Inestimable. Priceless one." She kissed him, hungry, joyful. Touch me.

He carried her to their bed, and answered her.

The CD player went through its six changes before they had enough of one another, for the moment.

She brushed the hair back from her face, and blew through her lips to raise the tendrils that stayed plastered to her skin. "That was wonderful, but I've got to go back to work."

He rolled onto his side. She glowed unearthly colors in the dark. "Work? What a concept!"

She laughed. "I suppose. But I have a job-- and one that needs to be done. For now, anyway," she said, sliding her fingers down his cheek, along the bristles of his beard. "I'm good at what I do," she explained quietly. "And my doing it means something. Somebody better at healing gets the chance to do that. Bad guys I help spot get put away. The relatives of the deceased put their mysteries to rest because I found the cause of death... and besides, it's a living. Please let me go."

He smiled at her. Lovely sense of humor, wit, wisdom, beauty. How much luckier could he have been? "You don't need my permission--"

"I need you to move your thigh off my knee," she laughed. "Otherwise I can't get up."

He shifted slightly, touching, and sat up straight when she emerged from the shower. "I never expected this, you know," he said while he brushed her hair.

"I never did, either," she said, kissing back. "But if it took a near-miss from an asteroid to get us together--" Her physical lips were so warm, and soft, tickled by his beard-- "Imagine what it would take to break us apart..."

He didn't even want to think of the possibilities.

The End.