Flashpoint--As Soon As I Am Able, Chapter Two
Title: As Soon As I Am Able
Author: coneycat
Fandoms: Flashpoint
Pairing/Characters: Spike
Rating: Gen
Wordcount: 2300
Summary: .
Prompts : None
Disclaimer: None of the following is true in any way, and no profit is made from this work of fiction.
Warnings: Season 3 Spoilers
Continued from Chapter One
Chapter 2
It was still dark when Spike let himself out of the house on Saturday morning, being careful not to wake his parents. When Jules called last night to tell him when they had to meet he'd promised his folks he'd be as quiet as possible--his dad had teased him a little about that, since when he was a kid he'd never been the sneaking-out type, and of course nowadays he was much likelier to be sneaking into the house before sunrise rather than out of it.
Not so much these last few months, though.
It was cold. Spike zipped up his jacket and the neck of the hoodie under it, folded his arms tightly across his chest, and sat down on the porch glider to wait for Leah.
And think. He'd been avoiding that as much as possible lately, but you couldn't just not think forever. Especially not when a person was tired, which Spike was right now. Had been for a while, actually--he wasn't sleeping normally yet, although he was improving.
For some reason, the preliminary hearing had helped. Spike couldn't really explain it, but he'd been less of a mess after that. The hearing had established the Crown's case against that tragically stupid kid, and it seemed like laying out her responsibility--hers and her dead partner's--made Spike start to let himself believe maybe it wasn't all his fault Lew was dead after all.
Still. He should never have let Lew anywhere near that bomb. He should never have said a word about any of this stuff. If he hadn't, Lew never would have been there, he wasn't the kind of guy who'd try to do something he couldn't, to blunder in and make things worse. If he hadn't known how to do a preliminary assessment of the situation he'd never have gone near that evil pile of trash bags in the first place.
But… there hadn't been another team--another bomb technician--close enough to get there in time. Every available SRU team had been spread out all over the city trying to find the second bomb, the one the caller had been so cryptic about, the one Spike and Babycakes had located and Spike had been in the middle of defusing when Lew and the sarge found the one on the campus. Spike could never have gotten there in time, let alone the other teams halfway across the city. The uniforms and the campus cops hadn't been able to completely clear the building, there were still kids coming out when Spike arrived on the scene and--
The bomb would have gone off and blown that building all to hell, with kids still in it. Spike was near enough to himself again to feel sick about the idea. Lewis couldn't let that happen, he didn't have any choice. Spike didn't either. Knowing that helped a little.
Parts of the preliminary hearing were a blur in Spike's mind. He'd figured the sarge would get called to explain the situation as the police saw it. The Crown was charging the kid with terrorism and first-degree murder--Lew's death fulfilled about three separate criteria under the Criminal Code: he was a peace officer who had died as a result of terrorism involving explosives--and Spike was called to explain about the bombs. He guessed that made sense. The kid had helped build and set them. Spike could explain exactly what she did.
And he was doing all right, really, concentrating on the technical details around the bomber's signature and the specs of second one in the office building. The prosecutor made him explain all about the motion-sensitive triggers which meant he'd had to work on the bomb by hand, and she'd acted like she didn't quite get it--she kept asking all these really obvious questions, which eventually had started to wear on Spike's nerves. Of course, part of the problem was that Spike knew he was going to have to tell her about Lew sooner or later, but she kept harping on the fact that he'd walked up to the package with the bomb in it, cut it open, and started cutting wires. She acted like she had never heard of a bomb-disposal tech before.
It got worse. It was bad enough explaining about Lew going to assess the situation, worse talking about Lew working on the bomb while trying to keep one foot steady on that landmine. When he got to the part about going out himself to see if he could disarm the mine, the prosecutor got him to repeat the bit about clearing the dirt away, with his hands, at least three times. Spike had finally lost it a little and asked her what she would have done if it was her and her friend was standing on a landmine. It was ridiculous.
And then he'd tried to explain about the pinhole, the one way to save the situation, the safety feature that let you pin the mine again so Lew would be able to walk away from it--Spike still dreamed about that sometimes, that he'd uncovered the pinhole and it was clear and everything was all right after all. Those were the mornings he hated waking up. By the time he told the story in the hearing he was already rattled and when he got to the part where he had to explain the hole was glued shut, he couldn't make the words come out. It was like his throat was glued shut, too. If the judge hadn't called a recess he'd have just sat there crying, and he couldn't even feel ashamed about it.
Sarge took him out into the hallway to pull himself together, and after a minute or two Spike realized the prosecutor had done it on purpose. The kid's only defense was idealism. She'd meant to damage property, not civilians, and apparently the police who were going to have to deal with the bombs regardless didn't count because it was their job. She and her partner had each addressed Ed as "Jackboot"--Spike didn't know where he'd heard that but he had. All they'd been able to see was the uniform. And if this case ever went to a jury, it'd be in front of twelve people who only ever saw the SRU on the news, all geared up like something out of an action movie. They probably didn't look like people at all, if you only saw them like that. Maybe a jury would actually think, well, too bad but it wasn't like the cops didn't know the risks.
So what the prosecutor wanted was to turn the SRU into people for them--the soft-spoken sergeant, and Lew who spent most of the last twenty minutes of his life making sure nobody else died that day. And Spike himself, the devastated guy who tried his hardest but couldn't do anything to save his friend. It was evil, and it was unnecessary at a preliminary hearing, but Spike got why she did it. She wanted the other side to know exactly what she was going to use to counter the "I didn't want to hurt anyone real" defense if this thing went to trial.
Spike and the sarge had been just about ready to go back into the courtroom when the two kids walked up, a boy and a girl from the campus paper or one of the earth defender organizations following the case, something like that, white kids with dreads, which Lew had always found kind of amusing. Sarge, not knowing what they intended to say, had stepped between them and Spike, offered his disarming smile, and asked what he could do for them.
And the girl, near tears herself, had addressed Spike directly:
"We're so sorry about your friend. He sounded like a good person."
Spike had just about broken down again himself as he told her thank you, but in retrospect maybe that had helped too. Maybe he'd also forgotten for a minute that other people were only human. After that his nightmares had gotten more manageable, at least. He'd almost stopped dreaming that he'd turned around in time to see what the mine did to Lew. Instead, he had the more normal nightmares, the "what if..." ones Spike figured everyone on the team had sometimes. What if we hadn't figured out which company the second bomb was set in, what if we'd guessed wrong entirely and hadn't searched the right buildings, what if some student or maintenance worker had spotted the tangle of trash bags on the campus and gone over to pick up someone else's litter...
What if they'd failed and a bunch of civilians had died instead. Spike found it perversely comforting that he found those nightmares almost as bad as the ones about Lew. It had to mean he was getting back to normal. Lew wouldn't have traded someone else's life for his own. At least nobody else had died that day. Lew had accomplished that.
Still.
He wasn't going to have to tell that story again, which was something else to be grateful for: the defense had accepted a deal for the kid to plead to second-degree murder. She might be out by the time she was fifty. Spike had no idea whether she'd ever really get that her gesture had always been pointless or accept responsibility for what she'd done, but he guessed he could live with not knowing. He had enough to think about already.
The front door opened behind him. Spike looked up to see his dad step outside, wearing his overcoat over his pajamas and bathrobe. His grey hair was mostly standing on end, he looked sleepy, and out of nowhere it hit Spike that his dad was getting to be an old guy. He slid over in the glider and his father sat down beside him.
"Sorry I woke you," Spike ventured after a minute. His father shook his head.
"No, I was awake. You don't sleep as much when you're an old man like me." He glanced at Spike and added, "Or when you're a young man with a lot on his mind."
"It's not so much my mind," Spike mumbled. Lew would have jumped on a line like that. Although he might not have said anything, just given a sideways grin that said he could, he totally could, but he was letting you off the hook just this once.
Spike's dad sighed. "Your heart, then." Spike studied the toes of his sneakers. His parents had lived in Canada for nearly forty years, but his dad had never learned to be reserved about his emotions. Canadians still puzzled the senior Scarlatti a little--he knew they felt things, he just couldn't understand their protests of "no, no, I'm fine." Spike privately believed the reason his father never missed the Stanley Cup final, even though he didn't particularly like hockey, was because that was the only time he ever saw a bunch of Canadians being honest about their feelings. Not that Spike would want his dad any other way. For a second he felt a rush of love that was almost painful. "Your mother and I miss Lewis, too."
Yeah. Lew had been a fixture at Scarlatti family gatherings for the last couple of years, like Spike was over at the Youngs'. One more of the approximately seven thousand hard things about Lew's death was calling or visiting his folks every week or so, to make sure they didn't feel abandoned. Spike wasn't sure he was doing any good, but they always seemed glad to hear from him.
His dad changed the subject. "So today, you're going to help Julianna with her yard?"
"Yeah," Spike said, and then he figured he'd save his father the trouble. "Me and Leah."
"This is the new person on your team."
"Yeah."
"She's a nice girl?"
Spike smiled at his toes, trying to imagine what would happen if he called Leah a girl to her face. That would be an excellent way to get knocked on his ass the next time they worked on hand-to-hand combat. He was pretty sure she could take him. However, to his dad anyone under the age of about forty-five was a girl or a boy, preferably a nice one. And the term had more than one meaning. It could mean exactly what it sounded like, like when his mother wanted to know about anyone Spike was dating. He knew his dad meant something else: "Does she fit in? Can you work with her? Can your mother and I trust her with your life?"
"Yeah," he said. "She's really nice. Very sharp, good at the job. I mean, I wish we hadn't gotten her this way, but…" Spike broke off. His dad put an arm around him and pulled him close. That kind of thing used to embarrass him when he was a kid, although he'd never said anything because he didn't want to hurt his father's feelings. As an adult he was well aware it was a pretty high-class problem, having a father who made sure you knew he loved you.
A set of headlights turned into the driveway. Spike hugged his dad back and, as he let go, asked,
"You want to come meet Leah?" The two men walked toward Leah's old blue 4Runner and Spike opened the passenger door. The Beatles were singing "Dear Prudence" on the stereo and Leah turned the volume down as Spike introduced his dad. His father and his team mate exchanged pleasantries for a moment and then his father said,
"Well, I should go inside, with my old bones. Have a happy day."
English was not his father's first language, but Spike knew he sometimes played with that to say exactly what he meant while pretending to mix up his words a little. This was one of those times.
"Thanks, Dad. You, too."
Continued in Chapter Three
Author: coneycat
Fandoms: Flashpoint
Pairing/Characters: Spike
Rating: Gen
Wordcount: 2300
Summary: .
Prompts : None
Disclaimer: None of the following is true in any way, and no profit is made from this work of fiction.
Warnings: Season 3 Spoilers
Continued from Chapter One
Chapter 2
It was still dark when Spike let himself out of the house on Saturday morning, being careful not to wake his parents. When Jules called last night to tell him when they had to meet he'd promised his folks he'd be as quiet as possible--his dad had teased him a little about that, since when he was a kid he'd never been the sneaking-out type, and of course nowadays he was much likelier to be sneaking into the house before sunrise rather than out of it.
Not so much these last few months, though.
It was cold. Spike zipped up his jacket and the neck of the hoodie under it, folded his arms tightly across his chest, and sat down on the porch glider to wait for Leah.
And think. He'd been avoiding that as much as possible lately, but you couldn't just not think forever. Especially not when a person was tired, which Spike was right now. Had been for a while, actually--he wasn't sleeping normally yet, although he was improving.
For some reason, the preliminary hearing had helped. Spike couldn't really explain it, but he'd been less of a mess after that. The hearing had established the Crown's case against that tragically stupid kid, and it seemed like laying out her responsibility--hers and her dead partner's--made Spike start to let himself believe maybe it wasn't all his fault Lew was dead after all.
Still. He should never have let Lew anywhere near that bomb. He should never have said a word about any of this stuff. If he hadn't, Lew never would have been there, he wasn't the kind of guy who'd try to do something he couldn't, to blunder in and make things worse. If he hadn't known how to do a preliminary assessment of the situation he'd never have gone near that evil pile of trash bags in the first place.
But… there hadn't been another team--another bomb technician--close enough to get there in time. Every available SRU team had been spread out all over the city trying to find the second bomb, the one the caller had been so cryptic about, the one Spike and Babycakes had located and Spike had been in the middle of defusing when Lew and the sarge found the one on the campus. Spike could never have gotten there in time, let alone the other teams halfway across the city. The uniforms and the campus cops hadn't been able to completely clear the building, there were still kids coming out when Spike arrived on the scene and--
The bomb would have gone off and blown that building all to hell, with kids still in it. Spike was near enough to himself again to feel sick about the idea. Lewis couldn't let that happen, he didn't have any choice. Spike didn't either. Knowing that helped a little.
Parts of the preliminary hearing were a blur in Spike's mind. He'd figured the sarge would get called to explain the situation as the police saw it. The Crown was charging the kid with terrorism and first-degree murder--Lew's death fulfilled about three separate criteria under the Criminal Code: he was a peace officer who had died as a result of terrorism involving explosives--and Spike was called to explain about the bombs. He guessed that made sense. The kid had helped build and set them. Spike could explain exactly what she did.
And he was doing all right, really, concentrating on the technical details around the bomber's signature and the specs of second one in the office building. The prosecutor made him explain all about the motion-sensitive triggers which meant he'd had to work on the bomb by hand, and she'd acted like she didn't quite get it--she kept asking all these really obvious questions, which eventually had started to wear on Spike's nerves. Of course, part of the problem was that Spike knew he was going to have to tell her about Lew sooner or later, but she kept harping on the fact that he'd walked up to the package with the bomb in it, cut it open, and started cutting wires. She acted like she had never heard of a bomb-disposal tech before.
It got worse. It was bad enough explaining about Lew going to assess the situation, worse talking about Lew working on the bomb while trying to keep one foot steady on that landmine. When he got to the part about going out himself to see if he could disarm the mine, the prosecutor got him to repeat the bit about clearing the dirt away, with his hands, at least three times. Spike had finally lost it a little and asked her what she would have done if it was her and her friend was standing on a landmine. It was ridiculous.
And then he'd tried to explain about the pinhole, the one way to save the situation, the safety feature that let you pin the mine again so Lew would be able to walk away from it--Spike still dreamed about that sometimes, that he'd uncovered the pinhole and it was clear and everything was all right after all. Those were the mornings he hated waking up. By the time he told the story in the hearing he was already rattled and when he got to the part where he had to explain the hole was glued shut, he couldn't make the words come out. It was like his throat was glued shut, too. If the judge hadn't called a recess he'd have just sat there crying, and he couldn't even feel ashamed about it.
Sarge took him out into the hallway to pull himself together, and after a minute or two Spike realized the prosecutor had done it on purpose. The kid's only defense was idealism. She'd meant to damage property, not civilians, and apparently the police who were going to have to deal with the bombs regardless didn't count because it was their job. She and her partner had each addressed Ed as "Jackboot"--Spike didn't know where he'd heard that but he had. All they'd been able to see was the uniform. And if this case ever went to a jury, it'd be in front of twelve people who only ever saw the SRU on the news, all geared up like something out of an action movie. They probably didn't look like people at all, if you only saw them like that. Maybe a jury would actually think, well, too bad but it wasn't like the cops didn't know the risks.
So what the prosecutor wanted was to turn the SRU into people for them--the soft-spoken sergeant, and Lew who spent most of the last twenty minutes of his life making sure nobody else died that day. And Spike himself, the devastated guy who tried his hardest but couldn't do anything to save his friend. It was evil, and it was unnecessary at a preliminary hearing, but Spike got why she did it. She wanted the other side to know exactly what she was going to use to counter the "I didn't want to hurt anyone real" defense if this thing went to trial.
Spike and the sarge had been just about ready to go back into the courtroom when the two kids walked up, a boy and a girl from the campus paper or one of the earth defender organizations following the case, something like that, white kids with dreads, which Lew had always found kind of amusing. Sarge, not knowing what they intended to say, had stepped between them and Spike, offered his disarming smile, and asked what he could do for them.
And the girl, near tears herself, had addressed Spike directly:
"We're so sorry about your friend. He sounded like a good person."
Spike had just about broken down again himself as he told her thank you, but in retrospect maybe that had helped too. Maybe he'd also forgotten for a minute that other people were only human. After that his nightmares had gotten more manageable, at least. He'd almost stopped dreaming that he'd turned around in time to see what the mine did to Lew. Instead, he had the more normal nightmares, the "what if..." ones Spike figured everyone on the team had sometimes. What if we hadn't figured out which company the second bomb was set in, what if we'd guessed wrong entirely and hadn't searched the right buildings, what if some student or maintenance worker had spotted the tangle of trash bags on the campus and gone over to pick up someone else's litter...
What if they'd failed and a bunch of civilians had died instead. Spike found it perversely comforting that he found those nightmares almost as bad as the ones about Lew. It had to mean he was getting back to normal. Lew wouldn't have traded someone else's life for his own. At least nobody else had died that day. Lew had accomplished that.
Still.
He wasn't going to have to tell that story again, which was something else to be grateful for: the defense had accepted a deal for the kid to plead to second-degree murder. She might be out by the time she was fifty. Spike had no idea whether she'd ever really get that her gesture had always been pointless or accept responsibility for what she'd done, but he guessed he could live with not knowing. He had enough to think about already.
The front door opened behind him. Spike looked up to see his dad step outside, wearing his overcoat over his pajamas and bathrobe. His grey hair was mostly standing on end, he looked sleepy, and out of nowhere it hit Spike that his dad was getting to be an old guy. He slid over in the glider and his father sat down beside him.
"Sorry I woke you," Spike ventured after a minute. His father shook his head.
"No, I was awake. You don't sleep as much when you're an old man like me." He glanced at Spike and added, "Or when you're a young man with a lot on his mind."
"It's not so much my mind," Spike mumbled. Lew would have jumped on a line like that. Although he might not have said anything, just given a sideways grin that said he could, he totally could, but he was letting you off the hook just this once.
Spike's dad sighed. "Your heart, then." Spike studied the toes of his sneakers. His parents had lived in Canada for nearly forty years, but his dad had never learned to be reserved about his emotions. Canadians still puzzled the senior Scarlatti a little--he knew they felt things, he just couldn't understand their protests of "no, no, I'm fine." Spike privately believed the reason his father never missed the Stanley Cup final, even though he didn't particularly like hockey, was because that was the only time he ever saw a bunch of Canadians being honest about their feelings. Not that Spike would want his dad any other way. For a second he felt a rush of love that was almost painful. "Your mother and I miss Lewis, too."
Yeah. Lew had been a fixture at Scarlatti family gatherings for the last couple of years, like Spike was over at the Youngs'. One more of the approximately seven thousand hard things about Lew's death was calling or visiting his folks every week or so, to make sure they didn't feel abandoned. Spike wasn't sure he was doing any good, but they always seemed glad to hear from him.
His dad changed the subject. "So today, you're going to help Julianna with her yard?"
"Yeah," Spike said, and then he figured he'd save his father the trouble. "Me and Leah."
"This is the new person on your team."
"Yeah."
"She's a nice girl?"
Spike smiled at his toes, trying to imagine what would happen if he called Leah a girl to her face. That would be an excellent way to get knocked on his ass the next time they worked on hand-to-hand combat. He was pretty sure she could take him. However, to his dad anyone under the age of about forty-five was a girl or a boy, preferably a nice one. And the term had more than one meaning. It could mean exactly what it sounded like, like when his mother wanted to know about anyone Spike was dating. He knew his dad meant something else: "Does she fit in? Can you work with her? Can your mother and I trust her with your life?"
"Yeah," he said. "She's really nice. Very sharp, good at the job. I mean, I wish we hadn't gotten her this way, but…" Spike broke off. His dad put an arm around him and pulled him close. That kind of thing used to embarrass him when he was a kid, although he'd never said anything because he didn't want to hurt his father's feelings. As an adult he was well aware it was a pretty high-class problem, having a father who made sure you knew he loved you.
A set of headlights turned into the driveway. Spike hugged his dad back and, as he let go, asked,
"You want to come meet Leah?" The two men walked toward Leah's old blue 4Runner and Spike opened the passenger door. The Beatles were singing "Dear Prudence" on the stereo and Leah turned the volume down as Spike introduced his dad. His father and his team mate exchanged pleasantries for a moment and then his father said,
"Well, I should go inside, with my old bones. Have a happy day."
English was not his father's first language, but Spike knew he sometimes played with that to say exactly what he meant while pretending to mix up his words a little. This was one of those times.
"Thanks, Dad. You, too."
Continued in Chapter Three