milliways_bar | Millitimed to this afternoon.

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Millitimed to this afternoon.

[OOM: Days go by as Spoon starts to settle back into himself. And eventually, Spoon has something to say]

The door opens on Yorkshire briefly before closing, then opening again a few minutes later to admit Harry Wells. He's in a remarkably good mood (these days for him nearly any good mood is remarkable), and he's got a thick brown envelope under one arm. It's just possible that it might be needed at some point, he figures.

In the meantime, he checks to make sure Annie's sign is still on the back door. Then it's time for a pint and a seat by the fire.

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Gray suit comin'. "Much better? Or only better?"

"Better than it could've been," says Wells, looking up. "Spoon's remembered his old hand with a sword, and he's been working on it like a demon. It's a hell of a sight to see."

"I might have to go through your door sometime and see it, then." He notices the envelope. "'Jump shift', as one of my correspondents says. What's the reading material for the evening?"

Wells' expression darkens a little, but he keeps it even. "A bunch of Spoon's file," he says. "The tapes're still at the farm, but this is some of the documentation they sent back with him from the island."

The Donighal's face darkens as well. "...would it be a breach of confidentiality for me to see that?"

"I don't think he'd mind," says Wells, sliding the envelope across the table. "He expected I'd give it to the people at the Academy, where I'm teaching Slayers. I haven't done that yet. Once I'm done reading it all through, maybe. You, I don't think he'd mind."

"Thank you." He opens the envelope and starts to read.
We have made incisions and removed samples of various sizes from subject.
After mere moments, he starts to wince as if in sympathetic pain.
Subject no longer responds to the name Private Ronald Witherspoon, however simply Spoon causes minor reaction.
Then the wincing stops, replaced by anger. The perceptive observer may notice faint sparks dancing in his hair and at the backs of his eyes.
Should subject prove to heal too quickly the exploration will be redone with silver tools.
Eventually, his eyes burst into flame, and the flames play along his scalp.
Dr. Pretlow is now cutting the body wall on each side of the diaphragm and spreading the body wall open without cutting the diaphragm.
He throws the papers back on the table just a moment before the moment in which his whole body is wreathed in flame but not consumed.
"However long this Pretlow suffered," he says in a voice like a talking bonfire, "it wasn't nearly long enough."

Wells isn't saying anything for most of this. Just working his way through his pint in silence. When the flames break out, though, he looks up.

"I don't think that I could agree with you more."

Possibly not the sort of sentiment one expects to hear when he's using the Father voice.

"It reminds me of... some things that happened in my original world. Years ago."
...police suspect that there may have been administration of drugs to keep the youths on a synchronized schedule.
For a moment, he seems reluctant to continue. "And some things that are happening there even now."
They were all restrained, steel bands over their arms, their legs and their eyes, and all of them had their heads cut open inside these glass domes that looked like big salad bowls. I don't know what the hell they were doing there, but they had every one of those poor bastards cut wide open to the M-R node. And they were alive, André.
He swallows. The flames die out, revealing eyes that, while unharmed physically, have obviously seen entirely too much. "Things that nobody has any right to do, whatever their reasons."
It pains me to torture you, but better a dead nova than a brother who fails to see the "big picture."

"I believe you," Wells says. "I wish I could say otherwise, but... I believe you. Then we understand each others' position?"

"That *ahem* that depends. Does your position involve a need for those involved in these... experiments to catch fire and/or explode?"

"I'd settle for them to end up with a bullet to the base of the skull, but there's a lot to be said for fire," says Wells. "'s cleansing stuff."

"And it makes the subsequent cleanup easier as well. Easier than exploding them, actually. Mind you, there's something to be said for leaving souvenirs that can be mailed to future targets, but then, there are things to be said against that as well.

"By the way, that rather... controlled voice you adopted a moment ago. Was that meant to be anyone in particular?"

Wells grimaces. "My evil twin," he admits grudgingly. "I don't like using that voice. He was one fucking nasty piece of work- dead now. About the only thing he's got to recommend him is it keeps the blind fucking rage in line, 'cos he was a dictator who outlawed emotion in general, starting with himself."

"...he wouldn't by any chance have been the former ruler of John Preston's where-and-when, would he?"

"That's him," Wells confirms. "I went with Preston to rescue a friend of his from the prisons in Libria, 'cos they figured I looked enough like Father to get past the security. Made for an interesting visit, I'll tell you."

"I can just about imagine." He finds himself wondering how his (eventual hoped-for) expedition to Bahrain would go if he finds a double for Thetis in this place. "And I gather it worked out all right, at least that time."

"Depends on how you define 'all right'," says Wells. "I mean, Father's dead and Libria's got a new government now, so yeah, that qualifies, but I really ought to've asked Preston what phase the moon was in before we left. Didn't occur to me at the time that it'd be different there than here."

"Yikes. Was the phase of the moon anything to do with how this... 'Father' eventually became dead?"

"I like the sound of that phrase," says Wells. "'Eventually became dead'. Got a nice ring to it. And yeah, it was pretty much everything with how he went. I don't know whether t'wish I could remember it or not."

"I don't know whether I'd wish it either, in your shoes. But as long as he's dead, everything else is just gravy."
"It won't spoil things if there is no blood. The blood doesn't matter. Just the dying." — Jason Woodrue, "The Anatomy Lesson"

Wells gets a brief pained expression, but nods. "That's the important bit. I make a point of bein' more careful these days. That's one experience I don't much care to repeat, and one voice I wish I could get out of my head- only I can't, 'cos it's mine."

"I can relate. I, too, have had to learn whole new levels of self-restraint to keep my inner demons from hurting the undeserving. I often wish the part of me that once decided to call myself 'Divis Mal' were no longer in my head, but a lot of things I need would go with it if it did leave." He notices the wince. "And, if my choice of metaphor be to blame for that wince, I'm sorry. It was off my tongue before it even occurred to me that it might be less than salutary compared to, say, 'icing on the cake'."

Wells waves a hand in the other man's direction. "No worries, mate. You weren't there. Like y'said, the important thing is the son of a bitch's dead. I'll give him this much, at least: dealing with the likes of him, even for as little time as I did, made it pretty fucking clear to me who the real monsters are."

His eyes drop to the paperwork again.

"I haven't seen anything yet to contradict that, either. Fur and fangs are one thing... this is something else."

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Millitimed to this afternoon.

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It's raining in [DEL: Washington :DEL] Libria tonight.

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