Spike City Chapter 5
This chapter follows directly from the last one where Spike walked out of the bar and into a punch that doubled him up. Poor Spikey. He's not having a fun time!
Inspiring manip by the wonderful hunny bunny shanmara
This manip is a present from the amazingly talented angelstoy I couldn't wait to put it up, so even though it will be used later in the story, here it is now in all its glory!!!!!! Thank you, sweetheart!!
Chapter 5
One of them was an Irish import named Riley Finn. Spike had seen him around town. The big Mick had a boy-scout mug and dead eyes that gave Spike the shivers. He was one of Jax’s henchmen, Porferro’s rival for top spot, and he had a reputation for cold-blooded diligence almost equal to Spike’s own. They’d had a couple of run-ins over the past few months. Nothing serious, but they weren’t pickin’ out china patterns anytime soon.
When he could force his swollen eyes open enough to get a glimpse of the proceedings, Spike could tell the fucker was getting his rocks off at the beat down. His shark teeth were spread in a wide grin of enjoyment. Spike had encountered a lot of teeth tonight, he thought muzzily. The shiny ones had been far prettier though, and looked less like they wanted to bite his face off.
The other guy holding onto him was a two-bit punk went by the handle of Harris, a little on the rotund side with dark hair that kept flopping in his face when Spike thrashed and jerked, trying to avoid the third man’s fists. Spike couldn’t remember Harris’ first name, and it didn’t seem to matter much. They were plenty intimate without formal introductions-what with Spike’s ribs probably broken and blood drooling from his mouth.
What mattered more than names were the hands squeezing painfully into his flesh with obvious relish, keeping him, with Finn’s help, from escaping the necktie party. Spike silently promised them both something slow and agonizing when the time came. Fingers removed, knuckle by knuckle might do the trick, or just choppin’ off their dicks with a rusty razor. He was leaning towards the latter, his face feeling the consistency of ground beef, and not a lot of forgiveness in his soul.
They had him strung up by the arms, the two of them pinning him to the wall outside the bar, while the third, a huge bloke Spike had never clapped eyes on before, which was hard to credit since he was tall as a friggin’ mountain and just as wide, delivered the beating with a grim rhythm. It was a different kind of music than what Spike had heard inside. His ears rang under the punches, head jolting from side to side as a pair of brass knuckles hammered his face, splitting skin, slamming into his cheekbones.
Short, savage blows turned their attention to his belly, the beer he’d drunk a little earlier finally gushing out past his lips in response to the assault. The thugs holding him cursed, relaxing their grip for a second. Spike seized the chance, struggled wildly, aiming a knee at his assailant’s groin, trying to twist loose. Third Guy stepped in close and disinterestedly broke his nose with one sharp jab. Spike sagged, an explosion of lights blinking distress signals behind his eyelids.
“Mr Jax’s says...” The palooka slammed another right into Spike’s gut, not the least out of breath from his night’s exertions. “Stay away from the news hound. Leave him do his job, or you’re gonna find yourself in a pine box six feet under. Mr Jax’s says....he hopes you play it smart after you get well.”
Thank bloody Christ for small favors. They weren’t going to kill him, at least not now.
A fist the size of a bowling ball renewed its acquaintance with Spike’s left eye, evidently meant as a physical exclamation point. The sidewalk lifted up, coming to meet him, when Finn and Harris released his arms, allowing gravity take its course.
“Got it, kid?” a not unkind voice queried far above him. “Just nod if you can’t talk.”
When he didn’t answer, a kick shifted his ribs over a few blocks. He grunted, an animal sound, doing his best to push a reply out through a mouthful of copper penny tang and loose teeth. His tongue was a useless flap of flesh no longer coordinating with the signals his brain was sending it.
Spike thought he might have managed something along the lines of “Sure, mate. Got it...got....” But he wasn’t entirely certain, and his audience seemed to have lost interest before he could finish expressing his whole-hearted agreement.
Three pairs of shoes clocked away from where he lay with his cheek on the wet pavement, ground glass tumbling through his bones. Spike drifted dazedly, wondering in curious detachment if now might be a good time for a little nap. Above his head, the halo of the bar’s neon sign blinked benignly in the misty rain.
Hands brought Spike back, big hands that jostled him out of his peaceful cocoon, setting up a bellow of agony in a body that felt like somebody else’s, or possibly too much his own, in a way he’d never experienced before. Everything, including his fingernails, hurt. Didn’t much help that the Nightingale assessing the damage was shifting him around with all the care of a flapjack about to be flipped.
“Ambulance is on the way. Can you talk?”
Spike spat a mouthful of half-congealed blood onto the sidewalk. Turning his head exploded small firecrackers along the base of his skull and into what use to be his spine. Forcing one eye open through its swollen lid, he made out the looming shape of his new best friend, the sodding “news hound” in question. This was just peachy.
The quotation marks looked phosphorescent in his mind’s eye. Sparkly. He tried for some air to answer, but the broken slats that use to be his ribs played one merry hell of a tune at being moved around. He gave up on the breathing thing, sobbing out ragged syllables between clenched teeth.
“Sur...re. Talk. Yeah. Doin’ it. Since. Bleedin’ last...birthday.”
Peachy leaned in close, concerned eyes resolving themselves from a pale face.
“Jesus, what happened? Who did this to you?”
Behind Angel’s nimbus-encircled head, Spike could see a crowd of blurry shapes jockeying to get a look-see at the action. Reckon he was quite a sight. He tried not to blame them for staring at him the way you’d stare at an injured dog on the street. He would probably do the same.
Somewhere far away, the first wail of the ambulance filtered through the fog threatening to suck him in. Spike clung to its edges, refusing to go down out of obstinacy. He focused on the question. Didn’t want the pretty man to think he was a ponce for losing a fight against only three.
“Mugged,” he slurred. “Ten of ‘em. Big as houses.”
Angel didn’t seem suitable impressed, but then he shifted Spike up, getting an arm under his shoulders. A roar went off in Spike’s head, and the next thing he knew, he was strapped to a Gurney, two likely-looking lads shoving him smooth as butter into the back of a lighted box.
“Was ten,” he mumbled. “Possibly twelve.”
“Yeah, right. Be quiet now. Let ‘em work on you.”
Peachy, non-believing Angel slipped out of Spike’s line of sight. Then there were hypodermic needles and a siren shrieking overhead. They took a corner flying. If Spike hadn’t been tied down, he figured he would have ended up in a heap on the floor. As it was, his battered body wailed right along with the ambulance’s howling voice as it sped through the night.
Angel followed the stretcher into the emergency entrance at the back of the hospital, keeping up with difficulty. He didn’t want to let go of Spike. He’d grabbed hold of a boot as the attendants wheeled him inside, rushing down the hallway passed benches of drooping people waiting their turn.
Spike looked so small and still with hordes of white-coated people swarming around him. Someone clapped on a blood pressure cuff. A magically appearing doctor bent over and shown a light into rolling blue eyes.
Stumbling back, displaced, Angel could do no more than frown thunderously as the crimson-splashed figure was hustled away, calling something that sounded like, “Peaches,” though why someone so beat up would be hungry, Angel couldn’t fathom. He was brought back from his mile-long stare by a poke in the ribs. A miniature Spanish beauty, barely level with his chest, stood clipboard in hand, staring at him expectantly.
“Formalities, hombre. Vital statistics. What is your friend’s name?”
She herded him into a plastic chair, one of a line outside the doors that had swallowed the injured man.
“Name?”
She loomed over him in all her tiny righteousness. Angel felt suitably intimidated and shrank back, trying unsuccessfully to make himself small.
“Spike. That’s all I know. Honest. We just met tonight. He didn’t mention his last name. I came out of the bar a little while after he left, and there he was on the sidewalk. I thought it was a wino or something, sleeping it off. Until I got closer and saw all the blood.” He spread his hands helplessly when she glared in disbelief.
“And you rode in the ambulance with him, a stranger? All this way. Must have made quite a first impression.” Angel wanted to say “Yeah, he did,” but she just plowed on, ignoring him “Either that or you’re a very nice person.” She tapped her pin against the bright red of her lipsticked mouth, sympathy starting to get the better of her irritation. “I’ll go check on him. See what the verdict is. You wait here, amigo.”
She padded away in her little white nurse’s shoes with an attractive swish of her hips that kept Angel watching, somewhat stunned, until she disappeared. Then he leaned his head back against the wall, shifting uncomfortably in the contorted shell that was the hospital’s version of a chair, thinking about first impressions.
Angel still wasn’t sure what had drawn him to Spike. He was beautiful. That went without saying, but he’d seen plenty of pretty men over the last few years, and none of them had tempted him to fall off his precarious perch on the straight wagon. Until now. There was something about the edgy intensity simmering around him that had drawn Angel in before he realized what was happening. Suddenly his backside was on the barstool next to Spike’s, and he heard himself spouting the oldest pickup line in the book. “Haven’t I seen you somewhere before?”
The funny thing was, it felt true. The curve of that curl-brushed skull when Spike turned his head, the elegant, pale line of his neck, rang bells in Angel noggin. It was possible he just wanted to have seen him before, or it might be deja vu rippling down the psychic network, chock full of destiny. But, Angel was too practical to believe that. It was more likely those damn cheekbones, and that mouth that drew his eyes despite himself. It still looked delectable, even swollen twice its normal size.
Angel jumped when a voice broke into his reverie.
“Go home. They are keeping your new friend overnight for observation.” Black eyes smiled at him kindly. “Three cracked ribs, a mild concussion, stitches, and maybe some internal bleeding. That’s what the observation is about. The possibility of bleeding inside. Oh yes, and he is going to have a spectacular pair of shiners.”
Angel noted the name tag over her right breast read, Paloma.
He slipped into persuasive mode. “Do you think I could see him, Paloma, just for a few minutes before I go?”
Angel tried to look humble. Did the puppy dog eye thing. Being a reporter, he knew the power petty bureaucracy could wield, though Paloma impressed him more as a human being than a robot. She squinted at him suspiciously for a minute before a genuine smile transformed her small face into a thing of beauty.
“They’ll be taking him upstairs in the next half hour. Wait here, and once he is settled, I will sneak you in.”
Impulsively, Angel caught up her small hand and pressed it to his lips. “Gracias, mia bonita. Gracias.” Having exhausted his rudimentary Spanish, he followed up with one of his better lop-sided grins.
“Aren’t you the cute one.” She patted his cheek, then turned and walked briskly away, calling “I’ll be back,” over her shoulder with an amused toss of her head.
Slipping into the room under Paloma’s cautionary aegis, the hiss of her “Sssssh,” following him, Angel could see Spike in the far bed, nearest the window, sleeping the sleep of the deeply drugged. He was spread out flat on his back in a boneless spill of limbs, looking as though he’d been run over by a mid-town bus.
There was an IV line plugged into one arm and a vitals monitor in the other, beeping reassuringly. They’d cleaned away the blood, and stitched up his left cheek and eyebrow, the black line of thread Frankenstein-shocking against the pallor of his face.
Christ. It was a sacrilege to damage that face.
Technicolor eyes swollen shut, split lower lip distended in a massive pout, he looked positively...seductive. Angel castigated himself for being one sick bastard, and tiptoed closer, overwhelmed with the urge to touch the white riot of Spike’s hair. It stood up every which way in a electrified mess of curls that made him look both defenseless and boyish.
The sight inspired a sense of protectiveness in Angel. All buses and mugger posses had best beware in the future. He’d long been a sucker for helping the helpless. That was one of the reasons he was working on his current story: to bring down a evil-doer whose immense corruption reached as far as innocent children playing in schoolyards. Looking at Spike, another victim in a long line, stretching farther than Angel could see, renewed his dedication.
There were three other occupied beds in the room. In the one closest to Spike, an old man, unshaven cheek pushed into his pillow, cried out suddenly in his sleep, making Angel jumped, breaking his trance. Paloma would be back soon, snapping at his heels, dragging him away. But, he’d return in the morning. It felt imperative for Spike not to be left alone.
It occurred to him then, for the first time, that Spike might have a family, a wife, kids, who needed to be notified. He would ask Paloma before he left the hospital. There must have been next of kin information in Spike’s wallet when they took away his clothes. Even as he stood in the dim room, watching the steady blip of Spike’s heart on the monitor screen, a distraught woman could be rushing through the night to his side.
The realization brought Angel’s libido down to earth with a thump. The fingers that had been stroking gently over the softly-haired skin of a unmoving wrist, pulled back. The unconscious man in the bed shifted his head restlessly, as though aware of the sudden depredation.
“Peaches.”
The word whispered between Spike’s lips into the medicated air. This time Angel heard it clearly. He blinked, at an utter loss. What the hell was going on inside that beautiful, battered brain?
Inspiring manip by the wonderful hunny bunny shanmara
This manip is a present from the amazingly talented angelstoy I couldn't wait to put it up, so even though it will be used later in the story, here it is now in all its glory!!!!!! Thank you, sweetheart!!
Chapter 5
One of them was an Irish import named Riley Finn. Spike had seen him around town. The big Mick had a boy-scout mug and dead eyes that gave Spike the shivers. He was one of Jax’s henchmen, Porferro’s rival for top spot, and he had a reputation for cold-blooded diligence almost equal to Spike’s own. They’d had a couple of run-ins over the past few months. Nothing serious, but they weren’t pickin’ out china patterns anytime soon.
When he could force his swollen eyes open enough to get a glimpse of the proceedings, Spike could tell the fucker was getting his rocks off at the beat down. His shark teeth were spread in a wide grin of enjoyment. Spike had encountered a lot of teeth tonight, he thought muzzily. The shiny ones had been far prettier though, and looked less like they wanted to bite his face off.
The other guy holding onto him was a two-bit punk went by the handle of Harris, a little on the rotund side with dark hair that kept flopping in his face when Spike thrashed and jerked, trying to avoid the third man’s fists. Spike couldn’t remember Harris’ first name, and it didn’t seem to matter much. They were plenty intimate without formal introductions-what with Spike’s ribs probably broken and blood drooling from his mouth.
What mattered more than names were the hands squeezing painfully into his flesh with obvious relish, keeping him, with Finn’s help, from escaping the necktie party. Spike silently promised them both something slow and agonizing when the time came. Fingers removed, knuckle by knuckle might do the trick, or just choppin’ off their dicks with a rusty razor. He was leaning towards the latter, his face feeling the consistency of ground beef, and not a lot of forgiveness in his soul.
They had him strung up by the arms, the two of them pinning him to the wall outside the bar, while the third, a huge bloke Spike had never clapped eyes on before, which was hard to credit since he was tall as a friggin’ mountain and just as wide, delivered the beating with a grim rhythm. It was a different kind of music than what Spike had heard inside. His ears rang under the punches, head jolting from side to side as a pair of brass knuckles hammered his face, splitting skin, slamming into his cheekbones.
Short, savage blows turned their attention to his belly, the beer he’d drunk a little earlier finally gushing out past his lips in response to the assault. The thugs holding him cursed, relaxing their grip for a second. Spike seized the chance, struggled wildly, aiming a knee at his assailant’s groin, trying to twist loose. Third Guy stepped in close and disinterestedly broke his nose with one sharp jab. Spike sagged, an explosion of lights blinking distress signals behind his eyelids.
“Mr Jax’s says...” The palooka slammed another right into Spike’s gut, not the least out of breath from his night’s exertions. “Stay away from the news hound. Leave him do his job, or you’re gonna find yourself in a pine box six feet under. Mr Jax’s says....he hopes you play it smart after you get well.”
Thank bloody Christ for small favors. They weren’t going to kill him, at least not now.
A fist the size of a bowling ball renewed its acquaintance with Spike’s left eye, evidently meant as a physical exclamation point. The sidewalk lifted up, coming to meet him, when Finn and Harris released his arms, allowing gravity take its course.
“Got it, kid?” a not unkind voice queried far above him. “Just nod if you can’t talk.”
When he didn’t answer, a kick shifted his ribs over a few blocks. He grunted, an animal sound, doing his best to push a reply out through a mouthful of copper penny tang and loose teeth. His tongue was a useless flap of flesh no longer coordinating with the signals his brain was sending it.
Spike thought he might have managed something along the lines of “Sure, mate. Got it...got....” But he wasn’t entirely certain, and his audience seemed to have lost interest before he could finish expressing his whole-hearted agreement.
Three pairs of shoes clocked away from where he lay with his cheek on the wet pavement, ground glass tumbling through his bones. Spike drifted dazedly, wondering in curious detachment if now might be a good time for a little nap. Above his head, the halo of the bar’s neon sign blinked benignly in the misty rain.
Hands brought Spike back, big hands that jostled him out of his peaceful cocoon, setting up a bellow of agony in a body that felt like somebody else’s, or possibly too much his own, in a way he’d never experienced before. Everything, including his fingernails, hurt. Didn’t much help that the Nightingale assessing the damage was shifting him around with all the care of a flapjack about to be flipped.
“Ambulance is on the way. Can you talk?”
Spike spat a mouthful of half-congealed blood onto the sidewalk. Turning his head exploded small firecrackers along the base of his skull and into what use to be his spine. Forcing one eye open through its swollen lid, he made out the looming shape of his new best friend, the sodding “news hound” in question. This was just peachy.
The quotation marks looked phosphorescent in his mind’s eye. Sparkly. He tried for some air to answer, but the broken slats that use to be his ribs played one merry hell of a tune at being moved around. He gave up on the breathing thing, sobbing out ragged syllables between clenched teeth.
“Sur...re. Talk. Yeah. Doin’ it. Since. Bleedin’ last...birthday.”
Peachy leaned in close, concerned eyes resolving themselves from a pale face.
“Jesus, what happened? Who did this to you?”
Behind Angel’s nimbus-encircled head, Spike could see a crowd of blurry shapes jockeying to get a look-see at the action. Reckon he was quite a sight. He tried not to blame them for staring at him the way you’d stare at an injured dog on the street. He would probably do the same.
Somewhere far away, the first wail of the ambulance filtered through the fog threatening to suck him in. Spike clung to its edges, refusing to go down out of obstinacy. He focused on the question. Didn’t want the pretty man to think he was a ponce for losing a fight against only three.
“Mugged,” he slurred. “Ten of ‘em. Big as houses.”
Angel didn’t seem suitable impressed, but then he shifted Spike up, getting an arm under his shoulders. A roar went off in Spike’s head, and the next thing he knew, he was strapped to a Gurney, two likely-looking lads shoving him smooth as butter into the back of a lighted box.
“Was ten,” he mumbled. “Possibly twelve.”
“Yeah, right. Be quiet now. Let ‘em work on you.”
Peachy, non-believing Angel slipped out of Spike’s line of sight. Then there were hypodermic needles and a siren shrieking overhead. They took a corner flying. If Spike hadn’t been tied down, he figured he would have ended up in a heap on the floor. As it was, his battered body wailed right along with the ambulance’s howling voice as it sped through the night.
Angel followed the stretcher into the emergency entrance at the back of the hospital, keeping up with difficulty. He didn’t want to let go of Spike. He’d grabbed hold of a boot as the attendants wheeled him inside, rushing down the hallway passed benches of drooping people waiting their turn.
Spike looked so small and still with hordes of white-coated people swarming around him. Someone clapped on a blood pressure cuff. A magically appearing doctor bent over and shown a light into rolling blue eyes.
Stumbling back, displaced, Angel could do no more than frown thunderously as the crimson-splashed figure was hustled away, calling something that sounded like, “Peaches,” though why someone so beat up would be hungry, Angel couldn’t fathom. He was brought back from his mile-long stare by a poke in the ribs. A miniature Spanish beauty, barely level with his chest, stood clipboard in hand, staring at him expectantly.
“Formalities, hombre. Vital statistics. What is your friend’s name?”
She herded him into a plastic chair, one of a line outside the doors that had swallowed the injured man.
“Name?”
She loomed over him in all her tiny righteousness. Angel felt suitably intimidated and shrank back, trying unsuccessfully to make himself small.
“Spike. That’s all I know. Honest. We just met tonight. He didn’t mention his last name. I came out of the bar a little while after he left, and there he was on the sidewalk. I thought it was a wino or something, sleeping it off. Until I got closer and saw all the blood.” He spread his hands helplessly when she glared in disbelief.
“And you rode in the ambulance with him, a stranger? All this way. Must have made quite a first impression.” Angel wanted to say “Yeah, he did,” but she just plowed on, ignoring him “Either that or you’re a very nice person.” She tapped her pin against the bright red of her lipsticked mouth, sympathy starting to get the better of her irritation. “I’ll go check on him. See what the verdict is. You wait here, amigo.”
She padded away in her little white nurse’s shoes with an attractive swish of her hips that kept Angel watching, somewhat stunned, until she disappeared. Then he leaned his head back against the wall, shifting uncomfortably in the contorted shell that was the hospital’s version of a chair, thinking about first impressions.
Angel still wasn’t sure what had drawn him to Spike. He was beautiful. That went without saying, but he’d seen plenty of pretty men over the last few years, and none of them had tempted him to fall off his precarious perch on the straight wagon. Until now. There was something about the edgy intensity simmering around him that had drawn Angel in before he realized what was happening. Suddenly his backside was on the barstool next to Spike’s, and he heard himself spouting the oldest pickup line in the book. “Haven’t I seen you somewhere before?”
The funny thing was, it felt true. The curve of that curl-brushed skull when Spike turned his head, the elegant, pale line of his neck, rang bells in Angel noggin. It was possible he just wanted to have seen him before, or it might be deja vu rippling down the psychic network, chock full of destiny. But, Angel was too practical to believe that. It was more likely those damn cheekbones, and that mouth that drew his eyes despite himself. It still looked delectable, even swollen twice its normal size.
Angel jumped when a voice broke into his reverie.
“Go home. They are keeping your new friend overnight for observation.” Black eyes smiled at him kindly. “Three cracked ribs, a mild concussion, stitches, and maybe some internal bleeding. That’s what the observation is about. The possibility of bleeding inside. Oh yes, and he is going to have a spectacular pair of shiners.”
Angel noted the name tag over her right breast read, Paloma.
He slipped into persuasive mode. “Do you think I could see him, Paloma, just for a few minutes before I go?”
Angel tried to look humble. Did the puppy dog eye thing. Being a reporter, he knew the power petty bureaucracy could wield, though Paloma impressed him more as a human being than a robot. She squinted at him suspiciously for a minute before a genuine smile transformed her small face into a thing of beauty.
“They’ll be taking him upstairs in the next half hour. Wait here, and once he is settled, I will sneak you in.”
Impulsively, Angel caught up her small hand and pressed it to his lips. “Gracias, mia bonita. Gracias.” Having exhausted his rudimentary Spanish, he followed up with one of his better lop-sided grins.
“Aren’t you the cute one.” She patted his cheek, then turned and walked briskly away, calling “I’ll be back,” over her shoulder with an amused toss of her head.
Slipping into the room under Paloma’s cautionary aegis, the hiss of her “Sssssh,” following him, Angel could see Spike in the far bed, nearest the window, sleeping the sleep of the deeply drugged. He was spread out flat on his back in a boneless spill of limbs, looking as though he’d been run over by a mid-town bus.
There was an IV line plugged into one arm and a vitals monitor in the other, beeping reassuringly. They’d cleaned away the blood, and stitched up his left cheek and eyebrow, the black line of thread Frankenstein-shocking against the pallor of his face.
Christ. It was a sacrilege to damage that face.
Technicolor eyes swollen shut, split lower lip distended in a massive pout, he looked positively...seductive. Angel castigated himself for being one sick bastard, and tiptoed closer, overwhelmed with the urge to touch the white riot of Spike’s hair. It stood up every which way in a electrified mess of curls that made him look both defenseless and boyish.
The sight inspired a sense of protectiveness in Angel. All buses and mugger posses had best beware in the future. He’d long been a sucker for helping the helpless. That was one of the reasons he was working on his current story: to bring down a evil-doer whose immense corruption reached as far as innocent children playing in schoolyards. Looking at Spike, another victim in a long line, stretching farther than Angel could see, renewed his dedication.
There were three other occupied beds in the room. In the one closest to Spike, an old man, unshaven cheek pushed into his pillow, cried out suddenly in his sleep, making Angel jumped, breaking his trance. Paloma would be back soon, snapping at his heels, dragging him away. But, he’d return in the morning. It felt imperative for Spike not to be left alone.
It occurred to him then, for the first time, that Spike might have a family, a wife, kids, who needed to be notified. He would ask Paloma before he left the hospital. There must have been next of kin information in Spike’s wallet when they took away his clothes. Even as he stood in the dim room, watching the steady blip of Spike’s heart on the monitor screen, a distraught woman could be rushing through the night to his side.
The realization brought Angel’s libido down to earth with a thump. The fingers that had been stroking gently over the softly-haired skin of a unmoving wrist, pulled back. The unconscious man in the bed shifted his head restlessly, as though aware of the sudden depredation.
“Peaches.”
The word whispered between Spike’s lips into the medicated air. This time Angel heard it clearly. He blinked, at an utter loss. What the hell was going on inside that beautiful, battered brain?