sunnydalealum | The Wells Farm

Without a word she turns to the bin with the fresh straw in it -- it's called something else, not a bin, but she can't remember the word -- and starts pitching straw into the stall.

"Going to silent-treatment me the whole time?" He asks after a bit, "Wasn't my idea to have you girls here."

Jordie's movements slow for a moment, and she glances up at him uncertainly.

He blinks back at her with placid green eyes, "Up to you, I suppose, but it'd be bloody awkward to have one of me favourite people not talking to me."

"Am I st--"

She reddens a little, and looks back down at the straw and the pitchfork.

Spoon tilts his head at her and waits for her to decide what she wants to say.

Very low: "Am I still?"

He sighs and pushes off the wall, then pulls her into a hug, "If doing something stupid was a reason for people to stop loving other people, Jordie, I'd be the least loved person on the world. Yes. You still are."

It's a very awkward hug, as Jordie is still holding the pitchfork and doesn't let it drop.

But she does bury her face briefly in his shoulder, before drawing a shaky breath and pulling away.

"Then," she says unsteadily, "then we probably shouldn't talk about it. I'm supposed to be here for punishment."

"...Y' ankle deep in goat poop." Spoon points out, "Don't think y' going to be enjoying the time much. Tomorrow we're going to spread the manure into the compost heap and y' will be learning how to turn compost so that it rots evenly before it gets spread on the garden."

Lots and lots of farming is about poop. And rot.

"Yeah," and that's a bit grim, and maybe a bit bitter. "I know."

"It's unpleasant." Spoon says, shrugging, "But it doesn't have to be hell. This is what I do every single day, rain or shine. Nobody told me I had to make you suffer. An' Cora will be out here in the morning to milk while someone mucks, an' Penny will be out to supervise work in the garden."

Still bitter: "The point isn't suffering. The point is that we're in disgrace."

She kicks a clump of matted straw.

"Ankle-deep in goat poop."

Spoon is quiet for a moment, then shrugs, "What do you want?"

Again an uncertain glance.

"Like right now? Or ... at all?"

"Either or both." Spoon says quietly, "Whichever comes to mind."

There's a long silence.

"I don't know." Low. "Get out of here and do something that matters. Fight evil."

"Why do you fight evil?" he asks after a long moment, "For what?"

She looks up at him blankly.

"What do you mean, for what?"

"Why do you want to fight evil? What are you fighting for?" Spoon says, simply, "Easy for me. I fight the dangerous things so that me girls grow up without knowing what I really am, what I can be at me worst. I take it away from here.

"I fight, an' I kill, so that I can do exactly what you're doing every single day and know that me family is safe enough to never see past the man in with the goats."

The adults know. Wells, Annie, Ace, even the man in grey. They know what Spoon really is. Penny and Cora? They don't, and Spoon keeps his Hunting as close as religion so that they never, ever will.

Jordie's grip on the pitchfork has unconsciously shifted.

"I fight," she says, "and I kill, because the things I kill will go on to hurt more innocent people if I don't."

She's standing a little straighter.

Spoon nods, not discounting what she's saying. It's a good reason, it is. It's just still...idealistic. Not complete, to him.

"But what do you think of the innocents? What do ordinary people mean to you?"

Another blank look.

"What does that have to do with anything?"

"Means everything." Spoon says, slowly, as he tries to put something he just knows on a bone-deep level into words, "It's easy to stop...being part of something...if you don't know who you're part of. It's easy to become what you fight if all your time is spent looking only at the monsters. If you're going...if you're spending your time thinking that normal people are less just because they can't fight, it's an easy slide to thinking that fighting is more important than all the things normal people do.

"Not saying you're there. Saying that it's easy. Seen soldiers fall down that path, and soldiers are just trained, they don't have the kind of power that you do. Great power means greater difficulty keeping y' head on straight is what it means.

"Got to be part of humanity to stay humane. Got to have ties to people, strong ties to people, who won't ever lift a weapon. Got to have them near the centre of your heart because the innocent is a really easy thing to hold up but a really hard thing to hold onto. How do you know how far is too far if you can't pull a face out of your heart and say this would horrify her?

"An' if you don't have strong ties right now then you've got to think the innocent through a bit more. Does innocent mean people who have never hurt other people? If so, you're probably only defending people under the age of two. Does it mean kind people? That's a lot of humans left demon-bait. What does it mean? What are you fighting for, really?

"Knowing that will mean that when you go out an' fight you'll have sommat to come back to. Even if only in y' heart. Having a calm place, a quiet place, inside is what keeps you from burning out.

"This is me calm place." he spreads his arms to take in the farm, from little trees to house, salle to barn, every goat and carrot on the property, "Every bloody thing I do is so that this bit of Yorkshire stays peaceful, one way or another."

Jordie stands there for a long moment, blinking.

"I don't have a calm place," she says finally; it comes out as a mumble, sounding far too young for her years. "And I don't even know any normal people."

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