Bad: Chapter 23

"The sun sinks behind the clouds
And hides his tears without a sound
The moon looks on reflectively
So, spare a thought for you and me
Where are you now?
Dark are the clouds
Where did you go
When I needed you?"

- The Rolling Stones


"Well, it's the end of the line for us now. You two bastards have done me in fer good. I knowed I shoulda gave leave of you twunty 'ears ago when I had a chance. Maybe then I coulda been something."

"You say that every time you get thrown in the pen."

"And I meaned it every gotdamn time. If this one knew how to keep his trap shut, we'd still be free men, and now here he is, polishing his damn shoes again. They ain't lettin' us out this time. Let those gotdamn shoes alone."

Spike sighed and rolled to face the concrete wall of the holding cell. Standard jail bunks were always about an inch too short to accommodate him. Once he was moved to the prison, they'd give him one of the extra-long beds. At least he had that to look forward to.

If the last 28 years had been a blur, the most recent 48 hours had been a fucking cyclone—one that had picked him up, shook the shit out of him, and tossed him right into the city jail. Faye had done the planning; he shouldn't have been surprised that it had ended with him getting sandbagged somehow.

It wasn't her fault. This had always been a foreseeable outcome, if not an expected one.

He couldn't say he'd been prepared for it, though. It had been a lifetime or two since he was last incarcerated, and his trademark insouciance was failing him yet again. He was scared, really scared, and he felt the sick lonely feeling he'd had just a few nights ago wresting his insides once again. Worse still, the pangs seemed to be inextricably associated with images of a skinny, dark-haired little troublemaker he'd recently taken a shine to.

To cap off his present state of malcontent, he'd been tossed in with three crotchety old farts that had been squawking like a bunch of yentas all afternoon.

"Gotta have somethin' to keep ya going," said the frailest of the trio, his thin voice weighted by what Spike assumed was a build-up of ancient tar in his larynx.

He sighed again and rolled back, watching the human comedy unfold. The one with the wicker hat lounged in a universe of disinterest while the one in the baseball cap stood, steaming, watching the third man rub his boots with a mechanic's shop towel.

"Pfft. Those damn boots ain't nothing worth salvaging."

"I had 'em since the last time we was here. They done me good then. Had 'em shining like a new dime. An' when we gots out, they took me lotsa places."

"Yeah, an' now they gotcha back in here."

"It ain't no turkey shoot, but I still got my boots to keep me comp'ny."

Spike could feel the sadness in his own smile. He knew he was young, but he felt old. Old and tired. He didn't know being a criminal was a life-long deal when he'd gotten into it, else he'd probably have straightened up a bit more.

He was not a weak man, but he knew his own weaknesses well. He couldn't handle being told what to think, how to act, what to be. The stir was a dangerous place for a person like that. That was a resolve he could not make, no matter how hard he tried, and it would be his undoing.

Still, even more than his obvious refractory tendencies, he'd known since age fourteen that his biggest weakness of all was for dames. It was the only respectable way to be, he guessed. If you were gonna take it on the chin in this life, making it about a woman seemed to be the most honorable kind of agony—or at least the most gratifying.

He knew it was the strain of captivity talking, but he was hurtin.' He wanted out, wanted to see her. He couldn't think of anything else he wanted more.

Goddamn you, Romani.

The old man in the wicker hat began to whistle the blues, a real dirge of a tune. Jet probably woulda been driven to tears.

"Gotta have somethin' to keep ya going."


"Stop picking your fingernails. I hate that noise."

Why it was that Faye felt comfortable making such demands of him was a mystery he'd ceased attempting to unravel long ago. Why it was that he'd finally chosen to comply with one, that was an entirely new perplexity, and yet another mutation to life as Spike Spiegel knew it.

She was beginning to annoy him again.

He, Jet, and Faye had spent over fourteen straight hours sifting through the data dump Edward had scraped from Warren Meltzer's computers, email, and bank account. Spike found himself to be a reluctant participant, something he rarely was, and generally tried not to be. But much like the events that had gotten him into this mess, everything just happened so fast.

Too fast.

Faye had come rushing into the common room as soon as Jet finished re-establishing the imploded communication portal, surely hearing the notes of the song being played out at their appropriate tempo, and Spike silently noted with some irritation that she had not retrieved any food at all.

"Holy shit. This is so much better than anything I could have asked for."

"What the hell is that? Porn?"

Warren Meltzer and his firm had been employed for the last ten years as the primary legal representatives of the Wonderland Mob, a criminal entity that had got its start distributing drugs and counterfeiting Woolongs with an amusement park as their front. They weren't to be taken lightly, though. They were a shrewd band of hustlers that knew how to hide themselves in plain sight. While all of the other crime syndicates make fairly minimal effort to hide their participation in illegal enterprises, the Wonderlands operated legit for almost an entire decade before anything funny was connected to them.

The boss, Kate Wheeler, kept a low-profile as a polite, unassuming homemaker turned late-blooming businesswoman, but rumor had it she had a hair-trigger temper and was a fan of cruel, unusual punishment—the likes of which included a locked car, a secluded body of water, and a long boat ramp. She was not to be trifled with—which is why the nudie photos buried on Meltzer's hard drive featuring Wheelers' jailbait daughter made such excellent blackmail fodder.

"Men are so stupid." Faye's self-satisfaction was approaching maximum density. She was such a sore winner.

Now here they were, sitting in the backseat of Meltzer's car in the parking garage of his office, waiting.

Spike was in a bad mood. It really wasn't his style to get led around by the nose like this, and he had no idea why the fuck he was letting all this shit happen. Everyone else was doing what they did best and, astonishingly enough, excelling at it in some measure. He couldn't shoot his way out of this one, and the noose was getting tighter by the day. So he let it happen, let everyone do what they thought was best, because maybe he really didn't know what was best for himself anymore.

For the first time since it happened, Spike thought maybe it would have been better if he'd just let go and disappeared into the white morning light on top of that tower.


"I should be dead by now, but I don't know how to let go of life."

Around the middle of Spike's tenure in the Red Dragons, that's when he and Mao had been the closest. Unbeknownst to anyone, Mao had been battling stomach cancer for almost a year. He knew better than to show any signs of his infirmity to his business associates, but eventually he had to come clean to his protégé. He was scheduled for surgery to remove the blackened tumor from his belly, and he had to be sure if he didn't make it, that his dream for his beloved syndicate would live on. Spike was the only one that could make that happen.

Since Mao's confession, Spike had taken to spending his evenings at Mao's bedside. At night, the older man became weaker and frailer, and sometimes he hadn't even the strength to push himself out of bed and make it to the bathroom.

Mao was the only person he'd ever really listened to. Most of what people had to say really didn't interest Spike, but Mao's wisdom was so effortless, so profound. He saw right through Spike, saw that his bravado and dispassion were a self-crafted vessel, a temple for a truly lost soul that was wafting up through the ether to nowhere. Spike knew he should listen now more than ever.

"There have been times when I've truly hated life, when death seemed the only way out of all of my suffering."

He coughed a little, as if to add dramatic emphasis to his expostulation.

"But in the end, if a man understands the true nature of it, no death is welcome. All suicides are an act of impulsiveness. No pain is so great as to make death worthwhile."

Mao fought through twelve hours of surgery and weeks of uncertain recovery, and he lived. Lived heartily and steadfast through the loss of the only boy he'd considered a son, until Vicious ripped open his throat with the same blade he would later attempt to use to split that very acolyte in two. And as Spike limped down those stairs, the pain of losing Julia fresh in his heart, the ache of the wound Vicious had given him fresh in his gut, death had seemed truly welcome.

But as he lay dying, he knew he could not perish on that blade, if not for fear of his own end, then for Mao's.


Spike rubbed his abdomen. The scar tissue felt tight and achy.

"I don't feel so good."

"Toughen up. We're almost to the finish."

His breathing became heavy, a strong pulse of dysphoria flooding through him.

"Maybe I was split in two."

"Sssh, here he comes."

He was more handsome than Spike had expected, but still old as grit. Probably late fifties, with all the trappings you'd expect from someone who got rich from blood money—sharp suit, sharp tie, utterly pointless yet dapper pocket square.

Faye's breathing stilled as Warren approached the car.

He was clearly an arrogant man. The parking garage was dim and desolate, but he didn't think for a second to cast an eye to his backseat as he slid into the leathered interior of the dark town car. He tossed his jacket into the passenger seat and straightened up, finally catching a glimpse of Faye in the rear view. But it was too late. Faye pressed her Glock to the back of his head, and cocked it loudly, making sure he got the full implication.

Warren sighed, already resigned. "I knew I hadn't seen the last of you."

"Then I left the right impression."

He made a noise of self-censure, though Spike doubted his sincerity. "I just couldn't help myself. I always had a weak spot for the crazy ones."

Spike rolled his eyes. He should have known.

"It doesn't seem like your self-restraint has improved much." Faye threw homemade copies of the smutty photos of Audrey Wheeler in the passenger seat.

"That's more sophistication than I would have expected from you, Valentine. I take it your friend here is a hacker."

Faye snorted. Spike was almost offended.

"This guy? Not remotely. No, Warren, you got yourself made by a 14-year-old girl. Which seems rather poetic considering this one doesn't look a hell of a lot older."

"Stolen evidence isn't admissible in court, precious. You're gonna have to do a lot better to tangle with me."

"The ISSP? That's bush league." She frowned. "Your employer on the other hand…"

Warren made another noise. Spike knew this one was very sincere.

"What do you want?"

"Oh, I so love those words."

Faye relaxed a little, dropping her pistol, falling back into the beige leather.

"This dude here needs some pro bono representation. Got a little wrapped up in that Red Dragon beef. Some DA is puffing himself up. Need you to burst his bubble for us."

"You're kidding. Red Dragons? I can't help you with that."

Faye's surety seemed to slip a little.

"Little Miss Less-Than-Legal thinks otherwise."

"I'll end up under water either way. I can't publicly associate myself with another syndicate, especially not one under such intense investigative scrutiny."

"Then get one of your pals on it. It's not our problem."

He sighed again, his anger genuinely dangerous. Spike could tell he was a seasoned crook. "When?"

"Tomorrow."

"A little notice would have been nice." He caught Spike's gaze in the rear view before moving back to Faye's. "Are you quite through?"

"Almost." She produced a slip of paper, flicking it between two fingers. "There are two names on this paper. I need you to research the remains of their estate."

"Who are they?"

She scoffed. "You don't need to know that. Just get back to me on what you find, and have our new legal counsel meet us at the courthouse on Tharsis tomorrow and one o'clock. Capisce?"

"'Easy come, easy go' was it?"

"You remembered."


"Really? That guy?"

They stood side-by-side in the ascending elevator. Faye shrugged.

"Eh. I've been known to lower my standards when it seems advantageous."

"Spoken like a true con artist."

She kept her eyes on the polished metal doors. "Not anymore. This was my last one."

Spike turned away, leaning into the corner, smug in his dubiousness. She paid him no mind, or at least did her best to give him that impression. He knew she was not inclined to listen, but he felt the need to give a word to the unwise.

"Going out big rarely works out the way you plan."

She finally cast a glance in his general direction.

"Think you know something about it?"

"I do know something about it. And if you're not careful, you can lose big."

She snorted. "I'm used to losing by now. And unlike you, I've got nothing left to lose."

He felt the flush of sudden anger pass over his skin.

"You know, you're something of a hypocrite."

Her tone was all dramatic boredom. "How's that?"

He chewed on his words for a moment, not sure he was wholly prepared to articulate them.

"You wanted me to stay. Now you're running out."

Her voice was grievously quiet. "It's not the same thing."

"You're right. I was facing up to my shit. You're still running. You know how to talk a big game, but down deep you're just as yellow as the rest of 'em."

"We never should have…" She stopped herself. "It was a mistake."

The elevator dinged.

"Tell me about it."

He brushed past her out onto the windy rooftop where their ships were parked. She stayed inside, refusing to look at him as the doors sailed closed behind him.

He stood alone and unseeing in the intense white floodlights, the cold, wet air cutting him.

"Shit."


"You gonna drink that, pal?"

Spike threw a sideways glare at the buffoon in his periphery.

He felt a drink was the only possible way to make this day salvageable. This whole district was nothing but swank cocktail bars, constructed entirely of glass and flooded with ambient lighting, patronized by stock brokers and plastic surgeons in tan suits. He wandered into the first dive he could find—a tumble-down little Tiki bar, complete with molting palm tree pillars and hanging lights that were shaped like inflated blowfish. It was the closest thing he'd had to a vacation in a decade.

It wasn't as horrible as he'd imagined when he walked in, save for one irritating burnout who seemed to be perma-glazed on piña coladas. He made the schlemiel the second he walked in, and sat on the furthest stool at the other end of the empty bar, hoping his disposition could not be mistaken as anything but stridently antisocial.

The hint was not taken.

After a half hour of yelling across the divide, the man shuffled to where Spike was sitting and took a stool. Spike just wanted one drink—then he'd shove off and leave this pleb alone again in this faded memory. But his whiskey sat before him untouched. He had a feeling it just wouldn't do the trick this time, and he didn't want to find out that he was right.

"Hell, it's a sin to let good whiskey go ta waste."

"Why did you love me?"

He could have asked her the same thing. He never really knew what Julia saw in him. He hadn't fretted about it too much at the time, but he wondered about it more and more these days.

He smiled a little to himself. He'd loved her so much, still loved her so much. It was a holy love, the truest kind.

Please don't hate me. I gave you the best of me.

"Well if you ain't gonna drink it…" the man reached across him to seize the idle tumbler. Spike snatched his hand before it touched the glass. The man's heavy-lidded eyes grew wide as he witnessed the gleeful malice begin to pull at Spike's features.

"There's only one person who's allowed to steal from me."


A/N: I've been dreading this chapter for over a year. I hope it was worth the wait.