Bet you thought it'd be another year before I updated. Surprise! I do not own these characters, etc. etc.
1.
Shin and Spike had been quiet on the way back to Shin's apartment. Shin was one of those ethical criminals, who thought of loyalty as a necessary weapon of an organization like the Syndicate. No one went into a syndicate with a death wish. Syndicates wouldn't accept dangerous loners. When a person put himself above the organization, he was putting it at risk. To go Vicious's way was to go the way of chaos. But now that he saw that his path was irreversible he had to choose between his friends and his organization. He wasn't sure how his brother figured into it. No matter what he did his brother might hate him, but if he acted quickly enough, if he were to go to Mao, he might be able to prevent his brother from facing danger. And there was plently, Shin knew, that Spike wasn't telling him. Spike wouldn't follow Vicious unless he thought they could make it happen. Whatever it was that they wanted. And what was it that Vicious wanted? To destroy all of the Syndicates, as a sort of personal revenge. He wanted a war because of what had happened within his lone family. Shin had always seen that Vicious held himself above the Red Dragons. Or, apart. Different, more important than the whole. Shin didn't like it at all. They entered the building and took the elevator up. He looked over at Spike, who looked over, feeling the stare.
"You don't like what I'm asking you, huh?"
Shin didn't answer.
Spike sighed. "Think of the alternative. You think they'd take him out? Then all the families would be after the Red Dragons. You might stall his plans, but if you can't get rid of Vicious it'll go a lot worse for you, and the Syndicate."
Shin looked past Spike. "I'm supposed to act out of fear for a rich boy's temper tantrum?"
"I didn't expect you to decide just like that," Spike offered lamely.
They stepped out of the elevator. Shin pressed his finger to a panel of the door and opened it, leaving it open for Spike. Negotiations were still in order. Spike was going to have to play this more carefully than he'd expected. They were friends, he'd thought. If ony it weren't Vicious driving the boat.
"Where's Corso?" Shin asked, looking around.
"How should I know, and why do you care?" Spike took out a pack of cigarettes and withdrew one. He thought of the night Corso was inducted into the Red Dragons. The sharpshooter had been aiming for him.
"That's weird," said Shin.
"He's probably out somewhere. Why hasn't the Syndicate got him digs yet?"
Shin laughed and grabbed his head.
"What?"
"Nothing. It's really strange, though. He usually never goes out. Trains and studies all the time. Like a machine."
"What's up with you and Corso?"
"What's up with Vicious and Julia?" Shin replied tiredly, giving Spike a significant look.
"Oh." His cigarette dangled between his lips. Spike laughed suddenly and hit Shin on the shoulder. "Well why'd you gotta be so secretive about it?"
Shin looked away. "Just politics, you know."
"You know," said Spike, "If you two are--" he caught an irritated frown "Listen, it's just that the night he was inducted, Julia and I took down a sharpshooter. He was aiming for Corso. And he was one of ours."
Shin seemed to be concentrating. "Well, fuck me," he muttered.
2.
"Are you all right?" Her voice, from long ago.
"Where did you go?" His mother, his sister. He barely remembered his father. And it was all different, before she left. That part of his life was contained, safe. Before they'd changed him.
"Allistaire?" He was tied, to a wooden chair. His limbs kept on twitching. He knew they were aching to be freed into murderous arches. What they had sent him here for. Some kind of sick joke, to them. Serendipity, for them.
"God, I understand now."
"What?"
He moaned in pain. He desperately wanted to be freed. His heart was beating too fast, weakening him with its panicked tachycardia. He kept on going back and forth between the past and now. Now was a room, expansive and largely bare. Spartan. It didn't surprise him. It was so much like their old room. She made him keep it neat, to teach him discipline. She needed him to be disciplined so she could take care of him better, make him safer. Their father, after all, had been a Syndicate man.
Not that the image ever held any aspect of child-idol fantasy for them. He'd seen what his father did for the Syndicate. He'd seen his father shoot a man.
Allistaire's stomach reeled. Hadn't seen life leave a man that way since that day. They had ripped it from him, his understanding of what killing was. They made it something different for him, a thing of adrenaline and necessity. And in all that, he'd forgotten. Why it was wrong.
Just shot the guy. Nothing more. He'd seen it on the television. But on the television, you didn't see their whole body jerk with death. You didn't see the blood just running straight out of their nose and left eye, just falling blood, pulled straight down by gravity, along with the soul or whatever it is that made someone alive, and meaningful. He'd seen his father do that. He never saw it done to his father. And he knew it had happened to his mother, so long ago that he didn't remember her.
Julia knew not to tell him cowboy stories, adventure stories, ghost stories. Stories with violence and death. She told him about their mother, and their father, and how they'd loved each other. How their mother's face would crack half open with a smile. How beautiful she was, with black hair and blue eyes. How she used to hug her father whenever she saw him come home, and they'd talk to each other in an embrace for a long long time, so Julia had thought they'd forgotten they had children.
Allistaire opened his eyes. "Julia." He was crying. "Oh, God, what am I?"
She looked like she'd been hit. She kept looking at him like she'd drown if he didn't help her. But he couldn't.
"Oh God," he gasped. "I killed them all." The training. The war. It was still going on. His friends were still there. Gren was still there. And somewhere in the asteroid belt, blood was falling straight down, pulled by the interminable force of gravity. He tried to vomit, but couldn't. He was already empty. Julia had her hands on his cheeks, desperately rubbing them. He felt her warm sweater-clad arms move around him and pull his face into her shoulder. He sobbed into it. It was doing no good. Everything was falling around him. He felt like dying. He had to do something to stop this feeling like he was collapsing in on himself. He hadn't been himself for... six years. And looking over those six years with recovered eyes made him understand that sobbing wasn't going to do anything. Julia still held him, and after a long time he fell asleep on her shoulder, and she moved him to the bed. His limbs were still jerking, but they were no longer dangerous.
3.
"What?" Spike was looking disbelievingly into his reciever. "I-" He looked over at Shin. "Yeah, I'll be there."
Shin stood by the window, looking past Spike, his hands in his blazer pockets. "It's about Corso, isn't it?
"Something going on with him," Spike said briefly. "I can't explain right now. But he's fine."
Shin shrugged, looked at Spike after a moment. "And you gotta go help out, right?"
Spike nodded.
"Then go to it," said Shin, almost bitterly. "Tell me if anyone else tries to shoot him or something."
Spike had a feeling there was a whole lot that he'd missed over the past six months as well. He moved briskly towards the door, sparing another glance at Shin as he left. Julia hadn't said anything abou what was going on, just that it was about Corso.
"My money's on the White Tigers," she said later, in her apartment, over Corso's pale form. It was the first thing she said to Spike. She smiled a little. "My brother." Her arms were folded. Her head drooped a little. She put a hand over her face, and Spike's hand falteringly drifted to her shoulder. When he touched it, he could feel the minute jerks she was hiding. She was crying, soundlessly. Spike awkwardly pulled her towards him. She didn't pull away, instead burying her face in his shoulder. He could feel the dampness, but there was still no sound. Spike could smell the perfume left by the shampoo in her hair. He rested his chin on it, and brought his other hand to her back and moved it in circles. It was something he remembered his mother doing.He had a feeling they would all be better off with their mothers. Why did they leave so soon? His own had died, early, and he'd left his father as soon as he could. It had been years since he talked to him. One of Julia's hands clutched his forearm and squeezed. Spike didn't want to let go of her, but she pulled back inevitably. "Sorry," she said, turning away from him.
"What happened?"
"He tried to kill me. Soon as he heard my name."
"You think that's why they sent him here?"
"I don't know," said Julia. "Probably."
"The sharpshooter," said Spike.
"Yeah, he probably knew."
"There's probably others who know."
"I know." She was silent, and then said, hoarsely, "They made him a killer. It was like... When he last talked to me it was my brother, but it was like they'd taken him away for six years and he just got back in his body."
Spike expelled a breath. "Motherfuckers." The corners of her lips quirked a little. "What are we going to do?"
"That's why I called you," she said.
Some part of Spike was glad it was him she'd thought of, even though it was because they were both spies. "I guess maybe we should call Harley and Delaware."
"Yeah," said Julia. "Not Delaware. Harley understands."