maybe it's the color of the sun cut flat and coverin' the crossroads I'm standing at

[gottaknockhard]

Who: Spike Spiegel (gottaknockhard) and Anne Boleyn (ensorceler)
What: When you can't think of a comeback...
When: Late night/between the 30th-31st
Where: Room 613
Rating: PG13

From the sound of things, Paradisa's temporary residents were going through one of their more serious moments; those instances when there's a legitimate urgency to be doing anything but aimlessly roam the halls of the castle in the middle of the night. Spike was well aware of the plans announced over the journal, and it didn't even factor into what was putting a dent in his sleep.

Maybe it made him a bad person for putting his own reality ahead of mysterious voices on the radio. Or he just didn't like the idea of crowds. Spike had no better excuse for what brought him to the room he's standing in front of. Aside from the nagging feeling that he didn't get what he meant to say out the last time he saw her, there wasn't a single reason he should be disturbing whatever sleep she finally managed to find.

Sometimes he wasn't clever enough to think of a mysterious riddle to leave on her doorstep, or to have forethought outside of a whim guided by... whatever it was that pulled him around lately. He simply knocked and waited for her answer.

Comments

[gottaknockhard]

It's times like this that she seems so young to him. He is too, by some measures, but there are days when he feels more like a ghost from the past, watching someone who isn't afraid to be so alive.

If he were more of a gentleman, he'd offer something for her to dab her eyes with. He should feel accomplished that the idea even crosses his mind. A man like him.

"We all have our issues."

[ensorceler]

She looks straight at him then, slowly lowering her hand once she's assured that her lips will not tremble and nor will her voice when she speaks.

"It is true, then. You think it all true. You always have."

[gottaknockhard]

He shakes his head, but after the brief anger he felt, he seems calm. Eerily so, considering how much he upset her. But she's still trying to hold it together, still determined to show her strength to someone who shouldn't matter at all.

"There is no monster inside you."

[ensorceler]

She hisses in response, venomous and defensive and as unsure as everything about her is now. How sure of herself she used to be, how confident, and now she trusts no one, not even herself. Her heart, her emotions, even her logic eludes her at times.

"It was the day after. The morning after. I was arrested. Will be."

The swing of her hand knocks over the goblet with only a bit of wine left in it, but she doesn't seem to notice or care as it clatters to the stone floor.

"The second day of May, you see, and I will be guilty, though I will not remember and so I proclaim my innocence to my lord archbishop and the world falsely. I am Anne Boleyn, the whore, the witch who beguiles and curses.

It is only for his love that I do not die in flames."

[gottaknockhard]

Spike keeps a stone face, because if he starts down the road she's trying to lead him on, he knows where it's going to end. Sympathy can be a crippling thing, and he's seen the faces of the doomed before. He understands when there is nothing he can say.

Reaching down, he picks up the goblet and sets it back upright on the table. "You've had too much."

[ensorceler]

"You do not tell me the way of things! You are no husband of mine, no god! You are beneath me, and you must remember."

[gottaknockhard]

He knows. In any circle that matters, he's as good as dead for ways much more deserving than hers. There's not even a ladder he's fit to climb.

"I'm still an expert in one area."