XXV. The Year of Living Dangerously
After days of near-fasting, a full meal of rice, bread, chicken and fresh market vegetables sat in his stomach like lead, and Spike groaned as he stretched his legs out in front of him, staring into the fire again, drowsy but feeling less like a husk of a man. Astrid brought out a pot of tea, and Bull disappeared into his tent to meditate.
She waited until Mayan had gone to collect more wood, and then sat next to Spike, looking hesitant. "I don't know how to ask you this," she began, "but it has to be said. It makes me uncomfortable to think my being here is bringing you more sorrow than joy."
He looked over at her and shook his head, smiling faintly. "I didn't mean to give you that impression. We both knew we'd move on. You did, and so did I. But you've moved on to someone you can have."
"That's some small comfort." She traced lines in the soft ground in front of her, an idle pattern that mirrored the weave of the blanket she sat on. "Even so, it's no comfort to know you're unhappy. I'd like to hear about her, if you want to tell me."
He sighed, watching her fingers. "It's not just the woman. But I suppose it begins and ends with her. Julia. Brave and beautiful. My two weaknesses."
She laughed softly. "Two qualities you have yourself."
"Not enough, apparently," he replied, blushing. "I think it comes back to ambition. My ambitions are all out of line with what I have to do. Ever since I've been here, I haven't been able to think about what's waiting for me in Tharsis City." He took a deep breath. "I found my way to her after I got shot. I'd be dead if she hadn't taken me in. And then, after she saved me, I thought I was going to die anyway, and I did a stupid thing I can't take back. I thought it wouldn't matter. I thought I wouldn't have to live with admitting it."
Astrid raised her eyebrows. "Better to confess loving someone than let it eat you up inside."
"Not when the woman I love is the lover of my best friend." The words came out clipped and bitter.
"That is a complication, though perhaps not an insurmountable one." She bit her lip. "And that's why you don't want to go back?"
"I suppose I could face it. They've been together for two years. It's embarrassing, but it could be swept under the rug. But it's more than that." He hesitated, and looked surprised as the words tumbled out. "I would give up everything else to be with her. That's the problem – that's exactly what I want. I want to walk away from the Syndicate, just pick her up and carry her with me somewhere like this, somewhere where it doesn't touch us and we can be together. And that would cost us both our lives. You don't walk away from this job and get a different one." He sipped his tea and closed his eyes.
"What happens when you do go home, then?"
He shrugged. "Back to work. Back to being the odd man out. Ever since my father died, I've thrown myself into anything that seemed dangerous, just to feel alive. But now she makes me feel alive – not because it's dangerous to love her, even though it is. For the first time I can remember since I lost Dad, I don't want to die. I'm afraid of it. I'd rather live out the rest of my life watching her go home with Vicious, just to know I could buy her a cup of coffee."
"Then you will survive this and everything else, as you have all along." Astrid smiled gently.
His expression turned dark, and he drank his tea in silence for a long minute before replying. "Rash action for the promise of happiness is just as instinctive as survival," he said finally, "and I have to master that instinct before I can go back."
Bull emerged from his tent and came to join them, looking silently between the two. He loaded the pipe and took a long hit before passing it to Spike.
He wished desperately for a cigarette, and dragged the tangy, faintly citrus smoke into his lungs instead, letting his eyes close and the sound of his own blood in his veins grow louder than the crackling of the fire. Julia's face, and Vicious', and then the face of his mother – such a faint image that she always seemed like a painting rather than a person when he could recall her – swam behind his left eyelid. He was vaguely aware of hands on his shoulders, laying him down, just like she had done when he was small, and the planet spun on its axis while his heart held fast to the memory at the center of its rotation.
***
The twin handgrips, throttle and altitude adjuster, shook so hard in Spike's hands as he banked into the last turn of the course that his palms grew hot and itched. Behind him, nosecone drifting in and out of the shimmering blowtorch of his primary engine, Pasel Wright drafted and gunned her engine in challenge; when they came out of the turn, she blew past beneath him and to his left, clipping one stabilizer on the Swordfish's wing. He felt the racer dip and pull, and instinctively adapted his grip to compensate for the damage. But now the ship's thrust was divided between pushing forward and staying on-course, and he let out a string of expletives that would have made a freight pilot blush as he watched Pasel cross the finish line almost a racer's length ahead of him.
Despite appreciative catcalls from the crowd, he stayed inside the bubble of the cockpit after landing, waiting for Doohan to come over and hook up the tow before he finally emerged, only to stalk to the cab of the truck and slam the door behind him. He sat there, forehead pressed against the warm glass of the passenger window, while Doohan drove him back into the city.
Anthony came out onto the veranda as the truck and mono-craft pulled into the circular drive, shielding his eyes from the sun with his arm. He watched Spike clamber down from the cab and take the steps two at a time, shoving through the front door and leaving it open in his wake.
"That was not the entrance of a first-place pilot," he called amicably down to Doohan.
"No, it was not," Doohan replied as he unhitched the tow bar. "Second, by a length."
"Who won?"
Spike ground his teeth, peeling off a boot and pitching it at the opposite wall before shouting through the open door, "Pasel fucking Wright and her fucking aluminum flying fucking go-kart."
The rumble of laughter from his father, and from Doohan, made the anger well up hot in his throat. He pitched his other shoe for symmetry's sake and pounded up the central stair to his room, collapsing backward and sliding down the door as it shut. He pressed clenched fists against his eye sockets, hating the way he could see the bright spots on one side and only blackness on the other.
No knock preceded the turn of the doorknob. Though Spike tried to hold fast, his socks and jeans had no purchase on the hardwood floor, and Vicious pushed him, sliding on his ass, into the room when he opened the door and came in. "What are you, a twelve year old girl?" he needled, but he smiled and made himself comfortable on the bed, hands behind his head, looking down at Spike with sympathy.
"Fuck you," was the best Spike could come up with.
"How much?" Vicious examined a perfectly manicured fingernail, feigning disinterest.
Spike hissed under his breath. "Twenty."
"Twenty -thousand-?"
"Yeah." He stood and stretched his arms above his head, sore from the race and the long ride home. "Don't do the math."
Vicious whistled. "You bet everything you won for the last, what, six months?"
"I said, don't do the math." Spike flopped into the desk chair in front of his computer, pulling up the sports news page on the SSW and wincing at the headline. He read it aloud: "'Another Year Before Spiegel Can Claim Youngest Platinum Cup Winner Title'. Fuck. Watch some sixteen year old beat me next year."
Vicious swung his legs around and sat up. "What's next on the circuit? Red Sands?"
"Yeah. I'm gonna have to ask Dad for the entrance fee. Mao still won't let me work."
"I'd lend it to you, but..."
"I wouldn't take it anyway. It's my own fault for betting on myself," he said, shoving his fingers through his thick hair.
Anthony appeared in the doorway, arms folded over his chest. He looked at his son, smiling slightly, and leaned against the doorjamb. "It's not the end of the –" he spotted the vidscreen and came closer, squinting to read it. "You made the ticker." Not much was left of his jovial tone.
Spike sighed. "Of course I made the ticker. It was a spectacular loss."
"You told me you weren't going to speak to them anymore." Anthony scowled.
"I didn't. I sat in the fucking cockpit until Doohan was ready to drive. I can't keep them from writing about the race, though. It's news."
"I thought you understood how important it was that you not make the news."
Spike sprawled spectacularly in his chair, a portrait of teenage exasperation, and let out a half-groan, half-growl. "For fuck's sake, Dad, the Platinum is the biggest amateur race of the year. I would have made the news if I'd won, too. I would have been the first sixteen-year-old pilot to win a major circuit race in history."
"Language," Anthony intoned, but the rebuke was half-hearted. "You know I don't follow the races. If I had realized what you were getting into, I wouldn't have let you enter."
Letting his head drop back over the edge of the chair, Spike snorted, but did not reply.
"If you hope to work in the Syndicate, you're going to have to start thinking about the consequences of publicity. And judging from what I overheard in the hall, you aren't going to earn a living at them anytime soon."
"I guess that means you won't help me with the Red Sands entry fees," he said, trying for pitiful but only managing mildly pissed off.
Anthony gave his son a hard look and left the room, pulling the door closed.
"Fuck," Spike muttered again under his breath.
Vicious chuckled. "Language," he mimicked, and yelped when Spike's heel connected with his knee.
"Don't make fun of him."
"I'm not. I'm making fun of you. He's right, you know? Give it up." Vicious gave him a hard shove in return.
He raised a fist, but let it drop to his lap and shook his head. "And tell Doohan what? He gave me the Swordfish. What would he say if I told him I was just going to use it as a commuter?"
"Tell him Anthony made you quit. It wouldn't be a lie. Lay low for a few months and we can work for Mao again. Put the Swordfish to use for a little espionage."
Spike let out a joyless laugh. "Sounds like a fucking blast." He stood and gestured toward the door. "I'm going down to talk to him. Might want to make yourself scarce for a while."
"I'll just hang out here," Vicious replied, watching him through half- closed eyelids. "Let me know when you're done begging."
Rolling his eyes, Spike shrugged and left, calling over his shoulder, "Use your own computer to surf for porn."
He clomped down the stairs and into the kitchen, where Anthony sat on his usual stool at the breakfast bar, shuffling papers. At his son's entrance, he gathered them neatly and slid them back in his briefcase.
"Dad, I can't quit. Doohan gave me the ship because I'm good." Spike pulled up a stool and leaned his elbows on the counter, not looking at his father. "I can make a go of this, I just made a stupid mistake."
Anthony patted him on the shoulder, though he ducked sullenly to avoid it. "Spike, Doohan gave you the Swordfish because you're good at flying her, and because it was your sixteenth birthday. There was no implied contract for you to race. And doing it now, so soon after..." – neither of them had ever figured out what to call it, so he pressed on with the meaning clear, "you're just asking for trouble."
"God, have you always been like this, and I just never noticed before? I'm not a baby. You didn't care that I was fending for myself away at school for four years."
"You were away at school for four years so that you could have some anonymity when you returned," Anthony replied.
"So you have always been this way. No wonder Mom got fed up." He knew it was a low blow as soon as it left his lips, but the sting of losing the race, the money, and now the chance to win it back left him bitter enough not to care.
"You have no right to speak on that subject," Anthony replied, his voice low and tight. "No right at all."
Spike rounded on him, leaning in, getting up in his face. "Well, you don't speak on it either, so all I can do is assume."
Anthony drew in a sharp breath and held his son's gaze as best he could. It was still so strange, looking at the almost-matched eyes, and knowing how hard he had to work to see normally with the implant. Something like sympathy softened his features a little, and he let the breath out again in a long sigh. "You're right. Though I don't really think you're in the frame of mind to hear the story right now."
"Dad, listen to yourself. What are you trying to protect me from? When are you going to start treating me like you did before? If you think it's going to convince me to see your point of view, I don't understand why you won't tell me."
"You brought up the subject, not me. It has nothing to do with the racing." He seemed to consider. "Maybe it does. Maybe it has to do with putting the things that give you a momentary high ahead of the things that can keep you alive."
Spike raised his eyebrows. "What, Mom was a junkie?"
"No!" Anthony bit back a harsher retort, and in a moment, went on, "Not that kind of high. The high of control. The high of danger. That's what it is, isn't it?"
Spike shrugged. "I don't psychoanalyze it. I like to do it. I'm good at it."
"Leah..." the older man trailed off, as though saying her name was enough to end the subject. "Not now."
"Yes, now. Tell me." Spike's face was a fierce mask, his knuckles white where he gripped the edge of the counter. "If you won't, I may as well pack up and go to work for Doohan. You keep things from me. You shelter me like I'm an invalid. If I can't be trusted with what my own mother did, or where she is, you'll never let me amount to anything in the Red Dragon."
His father's shoulder drooped, and he looked out the window with pursed lips, but at last he spoke. "Leah had an affair."
"I know that," Spike muttered.
"Leah had an affair with Harold Pennell."
Spike felt like something had clamped down over his windpipe. "What?" he finally managed. Pennell's name, in the Red Dragon, was synonymous with treachery. "THE Harold Pennell?"
Anthony nodded. "For two years before he was executed."
"That's pretty tawdry, I'll admit." Spike rubbed at his eyes; the nervous gesture was a hard habit to break now that he'd finally gotten used to the feel of the silicone.
"She knew about the plans for the coup. She knew when it was going to go down." Anthony finally turned to face his son, and his face was drawn, almost gray. "She knew about it and she didn't tell me, because telling me would have given away the affair."
Spike's mind reeled. When he was barely ten, Pennell had led an attack on the Van's chamber, with a full regiment of his own subordinates. The Vanguard had managed to save their charges, but at great cost to their own ranks, and the ensuing massacre left the Red Dragon floundering to regain trust among the survivors, as Pennell's net of influence was revealed to be wider than any had imagined possible. In the wake of the bloodletting, the structure of leadership changed, and Mao was appointed the public voice and operator of the Red Dragon, with the Van increasingly sequestered. As he ran through what he knew of the events, a chill crept up his neck, and he stared back at his father when the realization dawned. "She didn't leave," he whispered.
"Left this mortal plane, yes, she did," Anthony replied, barely louder.
"Executed." It was a statement, not a question.
Anthony looked away, out the window over the wide lawn, and nodded.
"They executed her and you still work for them." Bile rose in Spike's throat and he felt his muscles twitch, saw the familiar fading of color from the room as anger welled up from the pit of his stomach.
"If she had told me, I would have forgiven the affair. But she chose her fate." He hung his head, shaking it slightly. "Obviously, this isn't a subject that's widely discussed, or even widely known. So I wouldn't go mouthing off about it. If you're angry, you'll have to be angry and quiet."
"IF I'm angry?" Spike exploded, rising from his seat. "Shit, what would I tell people? Which story is better? My mother fucked a traitor, or my father let his employer kill her for it? Which part of that would I ever repeat to another fucking soul?" He stood shaking for a moment, and then blindly threw a punch, but Anthony caught his fist with an open hand and bore it down to the counter, his eyes blazing.
"I hope you are never betrayed," Anthony hissed, "and I hope you never know the feeling of having your innards ripped out by someone you trust enough to sleep beside them. But if you are, and you act differently than I did, then you can come back and criticize me. Not before."
The black and white tile of the kitchen spun, and he felt consciousness slip away like a tenuous thread unspooling up toward the ceiling.
***
He sat up with a shout, sweat congealing in the cold night air, to find the fire almost dead and the tents closed in their semicircle around him. As he sat, panting, he heard a rustle, and then Bull appeared. He shuffled over and shoved another log in the coals before settling to the ground. "Tell me," he said, not at all groggy.
Spike shook his head. "I've told you before. Last time I was here."
"The argument." Bull nodded, looking thoughtful.
"The argument. The car bomb. The things I never said."
"He hears you when you think those things," Bull replied, and stood again.
"And now I hear him. What he was really saying about betrayal. And in my heart, I think I'm more my mother's son than his," Spike said, and dropped back to the blanket, watching Bull walk back to his tent while flames began to lick the sides of the wood.
After days of near-fasting, a full meal of rice, bread, chicken and fresh market vegetables sat in his stomach like lead, and Spike groaned as he stretched his legs out in front of him, staring into the fire again, drowsy but feeling less like a husk of a man. Astrid brought out a pot of tea, and Bull disappeared into his tent to meditate.
She waited until Mayan had gone to collect more wood, and then sat next to Spike, looking hesitant. "I don't know how to ask you this," she began, "but it has to be said. It makes me uncomfortable to think my being here is bringing you more sorrow than joy."
He looked over at her and shook his head, smiling faintly. "I didn't mean to give you that impression. We both knew we'd move on. You did, and so did I. But you've moved on to someone you can have."
"That's some small comfort." She traced lines in the soft ground in front of her, an idle pattern that mirrored the weave of the blanket she sat on. "Even so, it's no comfort to know you're unhappy. I'd like to hear about her, if you want to tell me."
He sighed, watching her fingers. "It's not just the woman. But I suppose it begins and ends with her. Julia. Brave and beautiful. My two weaknesses."
She laughed softly. "Two qualities you have yourself."
"Not enough, apparently," he replied, blushing. "I think it comes back to ambition. My ambitions are all out of line with what I have to do. Ever since I've been here, I haven't been able to think about what's waiting for me in Tharsis City." He took a deep breath. "I found my way to her after I got shot. I'd be dead if she hadn't taken me in. And then, after she saved me, I thought I was going to die anyway, and I did a stupid thing I can't take back. I thought it wouldn't matter. I thought I wouldn't have to live with admitting it."
Astrid raised her eyebrows. "Better to confess loving someone than let it eat you up inside."
"Not when the woman I love is the lover of my best friend." The words came out clipped and bitter.
"That is a complication, though perhaps not an insurmountable one." She bit her lip. "And that's why you don't want to go back?"
"I suppose I could face it. They've been together for two years. It's embarrassing, but it could be swept under the rug. But it's more than that." He hesitated, and looked surprised as the words tumbled out. "I would give up everything else to be with her. That's the problem – that's exactly what I want. I want to walk away from the Syndicate, just pick her up and carry her with me somewhere like this, somewhere where it doesn't touch us and we can be together. And that would cost us both our lives. You don't walk away from this job and get a different one." He sipped his tea and closed his eyes.
"What happens when you do go home, then?"
He shrugged. "Back to work. Back to being the odd man out. Ever since my father died, I've thrown myself into anything that seemed dangerous, just to feel alive. But now she makes me feel alive – not because it's dangerous to love her, even though it is. For the first time I can remember since I lost Dad, I don't want to die. I'm afraid of it. I'd rather live out the rest of my life watching her go home with Vicious, just to know I could buy her a cup of coffee."
"Then you will survive this and everything else, as you have all along." Astrid smiled gently.
His expression turned dark, and he drank his tea in silence for a long minute before replying. "Rash action for the promise of happiness is just as instinctive as survival," he said finally, "and I have to master that instinct before I can go back."
Bull emerged from his tent and came to join them, looking silently between the two. He loaded the pipe and took a long hit before passing it to Spike.
He wished desperately for a cigarette, and dragged the tangy, faintly citrus smoke into his lungs instead, letting his eyes close and the sound of his own blood in his veins grow louder than the crackling of the fire. Julia's face, and Vicious', and then the face of his mother – such a faint image that she always seemed like a painting rather than a person when he could recall her – swam behind his left eyelid. He was vaguely aware of hands on his shoulders, laying him down, just like she had done when he was small, and the planet spun on its axis while his heart held fast to the memory at the center of its rotation.
***
The twin handgrips, throttle and altitude adjuster, shook so hard in Spike's hands as he banked into the last turn of the course that his palms grew hot and itched. Behind him, nosecone drifting in and out of the shimmering blowtorch of his primary engine, Pasel Wright drafted and gunned her engine in challenge; when they came out of the turn, she blew past beneath him and to his left, clipping one stabilizer on the Swordfish's wing. He felt the racer dip and pull, and instinctively adapted his grip to compensate for the damage. But now the ship's thrust was divided between pushing forward and staying on-course, and he let out a string of expletives that would have made a freight pilot blush as he watched Pasel cross the finish line almost a racer's length ahead of him.
Despite appreciative catcalls from the crowd, he stayed inside the bubble of the cockpit after landing, waiting for Doohan to come over and hook up the tow before he finally emerged, only to stalk to the cab of the truck and slam the door behind him. He sat there, forehead pressed against the warm glass of the passenger window, while Doohan drove him back into the city.
Anthony came out onto the veranda as the truck and mono-craft pulled into the circular drive, shielding his eyes from the sun with his arm. He watched Spike clamber down from the cab and take the steps two at a time, shoving through the front door and leaving it open in his wake.
"That was not the entrance of a first-place pilot," he called amicably down to Doohan.
"No, it was not," Doohan replied as he unhitched the tow bar. "Second, by a length."
"Who won?"
Spike ground his teeth, peeling off a boot and pitching it at the opposite wall before shouting through the open door, "Pasel fucking Wright and her fucking aluminum flying fucking go-kart."
The rumble of laughter from his father, and from Doohan, made the anger well up hot in his throat. He pitched his other shoe for symmetry's sake and pounded up the central stair to his room, collapsing backward and sliding down the door as it shut. He pressed clenched fists against his eye sockets, hating the way he could see the bright spots on one side and only blackness on the other.
No knock preceded the turn of the doorknob. Though Spike tried to hold fast, his socks and jeans had no purchase on the hardwood floor, and Vicious pushed him, sliding on his ass, into the room when he opened the door and came in. "What are you, a twelve year old girl?" he needled, but he smiled and made himself comfortable on the bed, hands behind his head, looking down at Spike with sympathy.
"Fuck you," was the best Spike could come up with.
"How much?" Vicious examined a perfectly manicured fingernail, feigning disinterest.
Spike hissed under his breath. "Twenty."
"Twenty -thousand-?"
"Yeah." He stood and stretched his arms above his head, sore from the race and the long ride home. "Don't do the math."
Vicious whistled. "You bet everything you won for the last, what, six months?"
"I said, don't do the math." Spike flopped into the desk chair in front of his computer, pulling up the sports news page on the SSW and wincing at the headline. He read it aloud: "'Another Year Before Spiegel Can Claim Youngest Platinum Cup Winner Title'. Fuck. Watch some sixteen year old beat me next year."
Vicious swung his legs around and sat up. "What's next on the circuit? Red Sands?"
"Yeah. I'm gonna have to ask Dad for the entrance fee. Mao still won't let me work."
"I'd lend it to you, but..."
"I wouldn't take it anyway. It's my own fault for betting on myself," he said, shoving his fingers through his thick hair.
Anthony appeared in the doorway, arms folded over his chest. He looked at his son, smiling slightly, and leaned against the doorjamb. "It's not the end of the –" he spotted the vidscreen and came closer, squinting to read it. "You made the ticker." Not much was left of his jovial tone.
Spike sighed. "Of course I made the ticker. It was a spectacular loss."
"You told me you weren't going to speak to them anymore." Anthony scowled.
"I didn't. I sat in the fucking cockpit until Doohan was ready to drive. I can't keep them from writing about the race, though. It's news."
"I thought you understood how important it was that you not make the news."
Spike sprawled spectacularly in his chair, a portrait of teenage exasperation, and let out a half-groan, half-growl. "For fuck's sake, Dad, the Platinum is the biggest amateur race of the year. I would have made the news if I'd won, too. I would have been the first sixteen-year-old pilot to win a major circuit race in history."
"Language," Anthony intoned, but the rebuke was half-hearted. "You know I don't follow the races. If I had realized what you were getting into, I wouldn't have let you enter."
Letting his head drop back over the edge of the chair, Spike snorted, but did not reply.
"If you hope to work in the Syndicate, you're going to have to start thinking about the consequences of publicity. And judging from what I overheard in the hall, you aren't going to earn a living at them anytime soon."
"I guess that means you won't help me with the Red Sands entry fees," he said, trying for pitiful but only managing mildly pissed off.
Anthony gave his son a hard look and left the room, pulling the door closed.
"Fuck," Spike muttered again under his breath.
Vicious chuckled. "Language," he mimicked, and yelped when Spike's heel connected with his knee.
"Don't make fun of him."
"I'm not. I'm making fun of you. He's right, you know? Give it up." Vicious gave him a hard shove in return.
He raised a fist, but let it drop to his lap and shook his head. "And tell Doohan what? He gave me the Swordfish. What would he say if I told him I was just going to use it as a commuter?"
"Tell him Anthony made you quit. It wouldn't be a lie. Lay low for a few months and we can work for Mao again. Put the Swordfish to use for a little espionage."
Spike let out a joyless laugh. "Sounds like a fucking blast." He stood and gestured toward the door. "I'm going down to talk to him. Might want to make yourself scarce for a while."
"I'll just hang out here," Vicious replied, watching him through half- closed eyelids. "Let me know when you're done begging."
Rolling his eyes, Spike shrugged and left, calling over his shoulder, "Use your own computer to surf for porn."
He clomped down the stairs and into the kitchen, where Anthony sat on his usual stool at the breakfast bar, shuffling papers. At his son's entrance, he gathered them neatly and slid them back in his briefcase.
"Dad, I can't quit. Doohan gave me the ship because I'm good." Spike pulled up a stool and leaned his elbows on the counter, not looking at his father. "I can make a go of this, I just made a stupid mistake."
Anthony patted him on the shoulder, though he ducked sullenly to avoid it. "Spike, Doohan gave you the Swordfish because you're good at flying her, and because it was your sixteenth birthday. There was no implied contract for you to race. And doing it now, so soon after..." – neither of them had ever figured out what to call it, so he pressed on with the meaning clear, "you're just asking for trouble."
"God, have you always been like this, and I just never noticed before? I'm not a baby. You didn't care that I was fending for myself away at school for four years."
"You were away at school for four years so that you could have some anonymity when you returned," Anthony replied.
"So you have always been this way. No wonder Mom got fed up." He knew it was a low blow as soon as it left his lips, but the sting of losing the race, the money, and now the chance to win it back left him bitter enough not to care.
"You have no right to speak on that subject," Anthony replied, his voice low and tight. "No right at all."
Spike rounded on him, leaning in, getting up in his face. "Well, you don't speak on it either, so all I can do is assume."
Anthony drew in a sharp breath and held his son's gaze as best he could. It was still so strange, looking at the almost-matched eyes, and knowing how hard he had to work to see normally with the implant. Something like sympathy softened his features a little, and he let the breath out again in a long sigh. "You're right. Though I don't really think you're in the frame of mind to hear the story right now."
"Dad, listen to yourself. What are you trying to protect me from? When are you going to start treating me like you did before? If you think it's going to convince me to see your point of view, I don't understand why you won't tell me."
"You brought up the subject, not me. It has nothing to do with the racing." He seemed to consider. "Maybe it does. Maybe it has to do with putting the things that give you a momentary high ahead of the things that can keep you alive."
Spike raised his eyebrows. "What, Mom was a junkie?"
"No!" Anthony bit back a harsher retort, and in a moment, went on, "Not that kind of high. The high of control. The high of danger. That's what it is, isn't it?"
Spike shrugged. "I don't psychoanalyze it. I like to do it. I'm good at it."
"Leah..." the older man trailed off, as though saying her name was enough to end the subject. "Not now."
"Yes, now. Tell me." Spike's face was a fierce mask, his knuckles white where he gripped the edge of the counter. "If you won't, I may as well pack up and go to work for Doohan. You keep things from me. You shelter me like I'm an invalid. If I can't be trusted with what my own mother did, or where she is, you'll never let me amount to anything in the Red Dragon."
His father's shoulder drooped, and he looked out the window with pursed lips, but at last he spoke. "Leah had an affair."
"I know that," Spike muttered.
"Leah had an affair with Harold Pennell."
Spike felt like something had clamped down over his windpipe. "What?" he finally managed. Pennell's name, in the Red Dragon, was synonymous with treachery. "THE Harold Pennell?"
Anthony nodded. "For two years before he was executed."
"That's pretty tawdry, I'll admit." Spike rubbed at his eyes; the nervous gesture was a hard habit to break now that he'd finally gotten used to the feel of the silicone.
"She knew about the plans for the coup. She knew when it was going to go down." Anthony finally turned to face his son, and his face was drawn, almost gray. "She knew about it and she didn't tell me, because telling me would have given away the affair."
Spike's mind reeled. When he was barely ten, Pennell had led an attack on the Van's chamber, with a full regiment of his own subordinates. The Vanguard had managed to save their charges, but at great cost to their own ranks, and the ensuing massacre left the Red Dragon floundering to regain trust among the survivors, as Pennell's net of influence was revealed to be wider than any had imagined possible. In the wake of the bloodletting, the structure of leadership changed, and Mao was appointed the public voice and operator of the Red Dragon, with the Van increasingly sequestered. As he ran through what he knew of the events, a chill crept up his neck, and he stared back at his father when the realization dawned. "She didn't leave," he whispered.
"Left this mortal plane, yes, she did," Anthony replied, barely louder.
"Executed." It was a statement, not a question.
Anthony looked away, out the window over the wide lawn, and nodded.
"They executed her and you still work for them." Bile rose in Spike's throat and he felt his muscles twitch, saw the familiar fading of color from the room as anger welled up from the pit of his stomach.
"If she had told me, I would have forgiven the affair. But she chose her fate." He hung his head, shaking it slightly. "Obviously, this isn't a subject that's widely discussed, or even widely known. So I wouldn't go mouthing off about it. If you're angry, you'll have to be angry and quiet."
"IF I'm angry?" Spike exploded, rising from his seat. "Shit, what would I tell people? Which story is better? My mother fucked a traitor, or my father let his employer kill her for it? Which part of that would I ever repeat to another fucking soul?" He stood shaking for a moment, and then blindly threw a punch, but Anthony caught his fist with an open hand and bore it down to the counter, his eyes blazing.
"I hope you are never betrayed," Anthony hissed, "and I hope you never know the feeling of having your innards ripped out by someone you trust enough to sleep beside them. But if you are, and you act differently than I did, then you can come back and criticize me. Not before."
The black and white tile of the kitchen spun, and he felt consciousness slip away like a tenuous thread unspooling up toward the ceiling.
***
He sat up with a shout, sweat congealing in the cold night air, to find the fire almost dead and the tents closed in their semicircle around him. As he sat, panting, he heard a rustle, and then Bull appeared. He shuffled over and shoved another log in the coals before settling to the ground. "Tell me," he said, not at all groggy.
Spike shook his head. "I've told you before. Last time I was here."
"The argument." Bull nodded, looking thoughtful.
"The argument. The car bomb. The things I never said."
"He hears you when you think those things," Bull replied, and stood again.
"And now I hear him. What he was really saying about betrayal. And in my heart, I think I'm more my mother's son than his," Spike said, and dropped back to the blanket, watching Bull walk back to his tent while flames began to lick the sides of the wood.