Hyperion Hotel, Room 515, Los Angeles, California, 1943

When Spike awoke to the sound of thunder, a still fully human Ginger sat smoking on the windowsill wearing his stolen blue RAF uniform shirt with the sleeves rolled up and the tails almost to her knees, watching lightning dance along the peaks of the San Gabriels on the eastern horizon, the candles burned down to dribbly pools around the room.

Framed by blackout curtains and distant lightning, she reached out one small hand to him in the fragile, gray light. Taking it, Spike joined her, rain suddenly sheeting down the window, blurring the early morning traffic on the street below into smears of colored light as he put his arms around her from behind, resting his chin on atop her unruly curls, eyes closed, listening to the rain beat against the glass.

Somewhere between peeling off that shirt and tumbling trouserless into bed with Ginger, Spike decided that putting the end off until sunrise would be more poetic then mid-roll in the hay as originally planned— thank you Nancy-boy William. Down below in the Hyperion's elaborate bar, Ginger balked at Spike's invitation to join him for the night, only to knock on his door, orchid corsage pinned to her uniform lapel not long after he'd stiffly marched away from their shared table in the Hyperion's ballroom after brusquely slapping down a book of matches with his room number scribbled on it in front of her should she change her mind.

Once inside, Spike's gifts had been accepted with proper gratitude when oddly nervous, he'd presented them to Ginger one by one in the light of a single candle: they had shared the chocolates and the cigarettes with her giggling in Spike's lap in the room's only chair in between oysters, necking to "Wish Upon a Star" surrounded by more candles. Later, the wine was greeted with delight: a child of working class slum tenements, except for communion wine, she had been raised around beer and bathtub gin.

Wine was posh.

He was posh.

Blushing, Ginger accepted his final gift, coming out from behind the privacy screen a naughty barefoot pixie in disheveled curls and green silk.

There was more wine.

Glen had been the right choice of wingman as the euphorics took effect while they slow danced to "A String of Pearls", shedding Spike's stolen uniform piece by piece along the way before Ginger pulled him down on the bed on top of her.

Afterwards, smoking as they lay side by side without touching in the dark room with Miller's "Moonlight Serenade" softly swirling in the background, she quietly thanked him.

He wasn't her first.

He wouldn't be her last.

It started in 1941.

19 and fresh out of nursing school, Ginger had joined her twin brother George in some place called Pearl Harbor on Oahu, Hawaii for a visit after he'd completed Navy boot camp, and had fallen in love with the place. Nurses were always needed. Maybe she could find a job in nearby Honolulu, maybe keep house for him, maybe start a new life in paradise, far away from the industrial grime of New Jersey.

The first Sunday after Ginger's arrival dawned bright and clear. After early Mass together at a nearby chapel overlooking the Pacific, her twin asked her to come with him to the harbor for a picnic and to see the ship he'd been assigned to. And would she wear the new hat, shoes and dress he'd bought for her birthday with his first Navy paycheck the night before? He had a buddy, a ship's carpenter from Iowa, who'd seen her picture in his footlocker who really wanted to meet her.

George was so proud, so excited about his first assignment that though Ginger couldn't tell a battleship from a bathtub and could care less, she'd agreed to come see this floating steel marvel, this Arizona, this amazing floating fortress and MAYBE meet his friend for coffee and hamburgers for lunch in that little diner where a lot of the sailors assigned to Pearl ate overlooking the harbor afterwards. She needn't worry, the guys would LOVE her, his prettiest sister. (George, don't say that. I'm your only sister!) Why, she have 'em eating out of her hand in no time!

At 7:48, while standing beside George, new field glasses he'd given her as another birthday gift pressed to her eyes, studying the Arizona which was riding at anchor across the harbor at Ford's Island while he enthusiastically explained the difference between a fantail and a prow, Ginger heard a rumbling sound in the distance followed by the wail of sirens.

Following the noise, she swung her field glasses around, and looking out over the harbor noticed a line of black columns of smoke rising into the clear blue sky.

That was when a nearby siren went off, all but deafening her.

George exclaimed, grabbed her by the arm, and hustled her across the concrete quay away from the water. She lost a shoe, but he wouldn't let her stop to retrieve it so she'd limped half shod across the scarred concrete as he urged her on, half-carrying her until, a huge cloud of smoke and flame belched skyward from the Arizona with a deafening roar behind them, followed by a second, louder blast, creating a shockwave which went through her body like the angry word of God as waves suddenly washed up over the artificial shore where they'd been standing just seconds before.

Gaping Ginger stopped in her tracks looking upward, field glasses forgotten heavy on their strap around her neck as airplanes roared overhead followed by many smaller, rapid concussions and the whistling of dropping bombs. Her twin knocked her to the ground, landing on top of her as an airplane with a red circle on it's side roared overhead almost close enough to touch, the stench of its exhaust a hot slap, a whistling line of bullets inches from her face.

As more bombs went off around them, showering them with shattered concrete, Ginger's twin yanked her to her feet, shoved her into a taxi in the tangle of cars, sirens, screams, and smoke, ordering the driver to head out into the countryside, somewhere, anywhere, just get her to safety, tossing his wallet in after her, before snagging a ride on a passing truck that was speeding back towards the burning harbor.

Another explosion and Ginger found herself staggering around hatless and shoeless outside the burning overturned taxi surrounded by running people. Dazed and bleeding at the knees from when she'd been blown across the pavement, she wandered in the red dress her brother had given her towards the explosions, towards the harbor, towards the screams.

(Ginger had paused mid-story in the dark beside Spike, pulling long and hard on the fresh cigarette he'd just handed her, before continuing her soft murmur to herself which he listened to with only half an ear, debating if he wanted to take her to one of the more exclusive ballrooms for her first kill or down to the docks for a random sailor before taking her to one of the high class Hollywood boutiques for a new dress as he tucked her against his side in the orange blossom darkness, savoring her soon to be lost warmth against his bare skin.)

Though she'd just graduated the week before, Ginger went from stretcher to stretcher, kissing the ones on the forehead she knew were lost causes so the doctors wouldn't waste valuable time on them, going through both tubes of lipstick in her purse and then her rouge as the Arizona slowly sank sideways in the water, gouts of thick black smoke belching from her sundered hull, sister ships bleeding rainbow clots of diesel oil as they descended moaning into the blue Pacific while the burning Nevada deliberately ran herself aground.

Sunrise found Ginger pacing up and down between laid out lines of silent men beneath the pearl gray sky, her kisses scarlet on their foreheads, dead eyes staring blindly upwards, oblivious to the streams of black, stinking smoke that drifted past. A Navy nurse found her staring down at the waterlogged, horribly burned body of her twin.

The other nurse convinced Ginger to sit down, to have some coffee, to go home.

Instead, Ginger had the taxi driver drop her off at the Naval recruiting station in Honolulu where she sat barefoot, disheveled, and torn of stockings in her blood-stiffened dress on the front steps waiting for the recruiting officer to unlock the door. She had beaten the men and boys, and was the first to join up, never looking back.

She always volunteered for the hardest assignments, sometimes being the first to help unload the mangled bodies of the wounded.

Coral Sea…

Midway…

Wake…

Guadalcanal…

…and… others.

And that Spike, Willy, was not her first. (Yeah, I sussed that the second you… oh yeah, what one can do with a wee lass not afraid to take chances!)

And he would not be her last - she had singled him out because he wasn't American— there was less chance of her looking down one day and see him staring blankly up at the sky as her brother had that horrible morning. (Did I miss something? And then maybe I'll nick that Pontiac Streamliner I've had my eye on for a while… black out the windows… go back East… show you a good time in New York...)

And she thanked him for helping her to forget it all for just a little while. (…forget what?)

And that she was shipping out this morning. (Heh, that's what you think, pet– you deserve better than anything the U.S. Navy can give you and I'm just the lad for the job!)

And that she was a nurse. She had resources. He needn't worry about her showing up with the shameful burden of an unwanted child nine months later – if he was even still alive by then. (Not a problem with OUR kind, kid.)

That, and the Mickey Finn he'd slipped her hadn't been necessary. She was a nurse, for God's sake, who did he think he was fooling? (Bloody hell, my head, had a little too much joy juice myself, better start the job NOW before I…) She didn't exactly fall off a turnip truck this morning!

Woozy from the same Finn, Spike let out a loud snort at this image followed by an unmanly giggle so that Ginger'd sat up suddenly exclaiming as she smacked him one, "Hey! Did you even hear a word I said, Willy?"

"Yeah, pet, every soddin' word!" Dizzy, Spike'd passed Ginger the half-empty wine bottle and she'd downed it anyway, with him finishing off the dregs before dropping it so that it shattered beside the bed on the parquet when he rolled over on top of her, presenting her with another highly restrained sample of what to expect from him in the near future, the ghost of William standing in the shadows reassuring him that some things didn't need to be savored slowly, that there was time.

So just as the edges of the San Gabriel mountains started to brighten from behind with the rising sun piercing the storm, Ginger turned her back on them, facing Spike on her windowsill perch, the scent of wine and orange blossoms mingled with cigarettes filling his senses, oddly passive as Spike carried her back to the bed like a child, from where she looked up at him in the grey light with the same look of dull exhaustion as he would later see on Joyce's the evening before she collapsed, and still later in the eyes of Joyce's eldest when he knelt wordlessly before her, cradling her coffin-torn knuckles in his much larger ones.

Demon-faced and unaware of the future, Spike had reached up, pulled the blackout curtains shut with one hand before turning up the record player to a deafening level and taking the present in his arms, sinking his fangs deep into her throat.

Had he been paying attention, Spike would have noticed that Ginger had arched her neck up to meet his mouth exactly where the bite would be the most effective.