"I don't want to feel relief, no I just want the remedy."

- Bo Baskoro

                                                                                  ***

Sirius was so silent, she wasn't sure that he was even breathing. 

Galloway let him stay like that until they were outside of the city limits and the nose of the car was pointed toward Richmond. The streetlights illuminated the car's interior infrequently, but it was enough to see the look on his face.

He didn't blink, his eyelashes quivering in protest. His lips were slightly parted and his head was lowered, eyes trained on the dashboard. His fingers tapped against each other where they rested in his lap, his shoulders bunched.

He looked like someone who had been told that their execution had been moved up by several hours with no chance at a recall to life.

Resigned to death, but still afraid. 

Galloway desperately wanted to touch him. She wanted to find some way to convince him it was going to be okay, but even she was starting to have her doubts, afraid to pick up her phone.

Then, she didn't have an option.

The shrill sound made both of them jump, and Galloway had to take a moment to keep from swerving into oncoming traffic. Her breath lodged in her throat and she snatched up the phone from where it had been sitting on the seat between them.

She took a deep breath then answered, keeping her voice neutral. "Hello?"

Next to her, Sirius was wound like a spring.

"Did you forget to check in?" Theron asked, voice distracted.

Galloway blinked twice before she managed to say, "No. I just wanted to get out of the city first. I was actually going to call you when we got to Richmond."

There was a long silence, in which she heard the distant rustle of papers, then Theron asked, "Anything happen on this collection?"

Sirius shrank down against the door, a small sound of distress filling the air between them. The sound made her heart ache. It physically hurt to see how scared he was. The ache was intensified because of how fearless she knew he was normally.

"Galloway!" Theron snapped, making her flinch.

"Sorry?" she asked, still watching Sirius from the corner of her eye.

Speaking slowly, like she was stupid, he asked, "Did anything happen?"

She swallowed hard. "No. He was collected, that's all." Galloway let a small pause descend. Then, with just a hint of contempt, she asked, "What exactly were you expecting?"

Her veins filled with ice water when Theron laughed. Actually laughed, the sound truly amused. Generally speaking, demons were not amused by a witty personality.

It was because they had a way to hurt you.

He finally stopped laughing and said, "Is it all right to be candid with you, Galloway?"

Sirius was watching her with wide eyes, his breath coming in rapid little pants that matched her own. She bit her lip, then said, "Sure?"

"Oh," Theron mused, "I was rather hoping you'd do something nasty like in Las Cruces."

Her breath came out in a startled rush of air. "You wanted me to break the rules?" she said, voice faint.

He chuckled again. "Mm. Rules, Miss O'Malley, are not for everyone."

Her heart tripped as he used a name she hadn't heard in seven decades. It stopped completely when his tone turned frigid. "Don't let that get to your head, Galloway. Just because I would have found another of your little incursions amusing, does not mean I would forgive it a second time. Call me immediately after each assignment."

The click of him hanging up was jarring, but Galloway's fingers felt like they had turned to granite. She started violently when Sirius gently peeled her fingers away. He turned the phone off and they sat with nothing but the sound of the engine filling the space between them.

Numbly, she said, "Told you he wouldn't know."

"Shut up, Galloway," Sirius said as he leaned forward, his face buried in his hands. Then, "O'Malley?"

A strangled laugh escaped her constricted throat. A tear slid down her face and she said, "My family was originally from Ireland. Supposedly, we're descended from Grace O'Malley."

"Who's that?" Sirius asked, his face still hidden and she got the feeling he was trying to calm down. He wanted a distraction from the bitter, rotten taste of fear she knew must be choking him. She had tasted it enough throughout her life to know how putrid it was.

The least she could do was help him out. 

She rasped, "She was an Irish pirate when England was still trying to take over Ireland. She was basically a clan chief who fought like hell to try and keep her country free."

Sirius snorted, the sound small and strained. He finally looked up and said, "That makes perfect sense."

She shrugged, the pain in her chest growing more acute with every minute that ticked past. "It's just a story. No one's ever been able to prove it. I could just as easily say I was descended from King Arthur or Vlad the Impaler. It's just a family story."

Sirius shook his head. "No. I much prefer the idea of you being related to some sexy pirate from way back."

She couldn't help the small giggle that burst out and then she couldn't stop. A small chuffing sound came from Sirius, then he was laughing just as hard as she was. Their relief was a palpable thing. She couldn't let what had just happened slip by without a proper acknowledgement.

Galloway laughed until her ribs ached, but eventually she managed to settle down, blinking to clear her blurry eyes. Sirius slumped back against the seat, shaking his head. Gasping, he said, "Our luck is not that good!"

"Maybe the universe owed us one," Galloway responded. She was pretty sure that was unlikely, but she really wanted it to be true.

Sirius shook his head. "Has it ever paid up before? I find the universe welches on its debts pretty uniformly."

"How about we don't question this right now, Sirius?" she asked. "I just want to believe that things can go right every once in a while."

"Then far be it from me to rain on your parade," Sirius muttered. He sighed and shook his head.

Galloway blew a strand of loose hair out of her face. "Theron wants me to break the rules."

"I heard."

She brushed her hand across her eyes. "I can't."

He merely nodded. Galloway bit her lip knowing that it would be beyond idiotic to admit what she really thought. So, of course, she did. Softly, she confessed, "I want to."

"I... We all do," he returned just as softly. "Why do you think they work so hard to keep us in line?"

She let this half-truth live for a little while. Then, she said, "I don't think that's true. I don't think everyone has such a problem toeing the line."

Sirius closed his eyes briefly, then turned to her. In a flash of headlights, for the first time since she had met him, she saw how old his eyes were. Gently, he replied, "It's true enough."

"I'm tired of true enough, Sirius," she snapped.

He climbed easily over the seat and stretched out in the back. He didn't answer her for a long time.

Just when she thought he had fallen asleep, he said, "And I'm tired of worrying that you're going to end up dead."

                                                                                       ~~~

Galloway pulled into a motel a little before midnight. Sirius' words had chased her all the way from Pennsylvania to Virginia, and her eyes burned with exhaustion and terrible realization. Looking over her shoulder, she found him still asleep.

For a long moment, she just watched him. Studied the lush curve of his mouth, the ink stained fan of his lashes, the midnight spill of his hair over his forehead. His lips were parted slightly as he slept and she had the overwhelming urge to press her mouth to his.

She squeezed her eyes shut.

Would it make you feel better if I told you she doesn't plan on falling for him? Rhys' question ghosted across her mind, making her slump forward.

In a way, it was a relief to finally just admit it to herself. At the same time, it was the most terrifying thing that had ever happened to her. Because there was nothing uncertain about her confession. Nothing unclear or unsure.

She knew, with a hopeless, tragic certainty, that if she actually let herself love him, it would end in nothing good. That it would start the end of the world.

Her time at Logan's had been an exercise in futility. She knew that now. Or she admitted it now.

All it had taken was a half decent explanation from Sirius and one collection gone wrong to let her know just how useless it had all been. No matter how hard she had tried to convince herself that it had, nothing had changed. Nothing that needed to change, anyway. Rhys had been right about a lot of things, save one. There was no real way to distance herself from Sirius. Not anymore.

Rhys, regardless of his true stories and compelling logic, had been nothing more than the key that opened a dark door in her mind. He had been the tool that let her understand how, exactly, she had come to be staring at a Hellhound in her backseat, in the twenty-first century, while working for Hell.

He'd let her find a reason for her family's death and their resurrection. He'd given her understanding, but nothing more.

The witch hadn't killed any of her feelings for Sirius. He'd just made her understand what would happen if she acted on them.

Just because you've acknowledged how you feel, doesn't mean anything has to change.

Galloway frowned at the small voice. Of course it changed everything.

That doesn't make any sense, she argued silently.

Acknowledge it, understand how you feel, then...let it go. Wave at it every time it passes by. It doesn't have to change how you operate. Just don't let it.

She opened the door quietly, wincing as the hinges creaked. Closing the door softly, she made sure she hadn't woken Sirius, then made her way to the front desk and a very grumpy looking clerk. Silently, she held out a small wad of cash.

He looked at her suspiciously, but when she didn't hesitate, he snatched the money away.

"One room 'rr two?" he asked in a thick, unrefined Southern accent.

She started to say "two", then stopped. Her eyes flicked toward the window where she could see Sirius standing next to the car, stretching. She waged a silent debate, then realized that avoiding him would be impossible and unhelpful.

Besides, that voice was right. Once you knew a thing existed, you could find a way to kill it.

That was practically the Hunter creed.

"One room, two beds," she said decisively.

The man gave her a key. Galloway went back out into the chilly night air, her breath streaming behind her in a cloud. Sirius held his hand up and she tossed him the room key.

He frowned down at it and said, "I wanted the car keys. I was going to grab our stuff."

"I got it," she said absently. "You can go find the room. Oh, and if it smells like someone's been murdered in it, I'll demand a new one."

Sirius gave her a weird look before shrugging and ambling over to the single story row of rooms. When he found what he was looking for, he whistled to let her know which one was theirs before disappearing inside.

Picking their bags up off the ground, she closed and locked the trunk, then took a minute to really think.

She rolled the words around in her mind, testing their weight.

I'm in love with Sirius.

Then she paired them with something else.

And it doesn't matter.

The addition brought with it a terrible sadness, but not an unbearable one. Hefting the bags over her shoulder, she smiled to herself. She had learned a long time ago that you could live with sadness.

It was hope you couldn't live with.

When she got to the room, she nudged the door all the way open with her foot, then threw the bags onto one of the beds. She rolled her neck, making the bones pop, then looked around at the impersonal walls of the room.

It was a little boring with taupe walls and sedate maroon bed covers. Then again, she was used to weird, theme-based decoration. At least it looked pretty clean.

Sirius came out of what she assumed was the bathroom and said, "When do we need to find the Debtor here?"

Reluctantly, she pulled out the folder containing their assignments and glanced briefly at the Richmond paper. With a small sigh of relief, she answered, "We've got two days of down time. Why?"

He smiled and waved a brochure at her.

With a frown, she took it from him. "Since when do we go sightseeing?"

"Since Richmond has its fair share of hauntings," Sirius said, pointing out a small, grainy picture of a decrepit looking building. "That's St. Mark's Asylum. It's barely ten miles from here."

Galloway laughed. "It's a tourist trap."

"It's closed to the public!" Sirius argued, crossing his arms stubbornly.

Now she frowned at the small caption, which claimed that the place had been sealed off after a possessed visitor had brutally murdered his girlfriend eight years ago. Her frown deepened as she looked up at him.

Like he knew what she was thinking, he said, "We decided hunting wasn't actually against the rules. Therefore, it cannot put you at risk of going dark."

She laughed. "Saying it like that makes it sound like I work for the CIA. Like I'm going to become a rogue agent."

He just gave her a dry look.

"We've also had a rough couple days," she said slowly, but already she could feel the excitement of a hunt burning through her blood.

"Exactly," Sirius said, taking the brochure from her. "I'd say we could do with a good fight and an actual win. Then, perhaps a couple hundred shots."

Now she shook her head in earnest. "The last time I drank with you, I almost died."

"So we can just drink alone together. It's not the same thing." Sirius grinned and her heart lurched uncomfortably.

Pursing her lips, she wondered if it really was just this simple. She wondered if it was really possible to learn what she had at Logan's, then just as easily return to what her life had been before she'd learned it. That her conflicting thoughts could reconcile so quickly. That she could act like nothing had changed, even though everything had.

Then she remembered that it would probably always be this easy to run back to Sirius, no matter how terrible that might be. It would seem Rhys had been correct about that at least.

Rhys said you should hunt.

She grinned at that thought, then said, "Okay, but we need to do a little research."

Sirius growled, his eyes slitting. Flopping down onto the bed, he said, "What's to research? We know there's a ghost. We know how to kill said ghost." He frowned. "That sounded less weird in my head. Kill a ghost. It's already dead. Can you kill it if it's already dead?"

Galloway pulled out her laptop, turning it on. With a small chuckle, she said, "That's the question, isn't it?" Sadly, she added, "No one knows what happens to them when we kill them. We hope they're moving on, but for all we know we're just destroying them completely. Wiping their existence away permanently."

"Well that's a rather melancholy thought," Sirius said with a frown.

She shrugged. "That's the job."

Doing a quick search of St. Mark's Asylum, Galloway spent all of thirty minutes looking into the abandoned medical facility before she shut the computer with a snap. Sirius looked over at her and raised an eyebrow.

With a sigh, she said, "We should probably bring extra salt. From everything that's said about this place, we might be looking at over twenty different spirits. Those old insane asylums were brutal places."

Sirius sat up with a grin, then his smile faded into a look of horror. "I've just volunteered for a night of gravedigging, haven't I?"

She smiled sweetly at him. "Oh yeah."

Sirius shook his head like he couldn't believe his own stupidity, then joined her at the door. Pulling on his jacket, he asked, "What's the game plan for ghosts again?"

"Salt and iron repel them," Galloway said, leading the way to the car. "That should keep us safe enough while we poke around the place."

"Don't you already have names?" Sirius asked, getting into the Chevelle. "Why do we need to go in?"

"I have a couple ideas of who we're going to be digging up tonight," she admitted. "But I'd rather take the chances of getting thrown around a little by a ghost than digging up twenty bodies if it turns out all we really need to dig up is one. It's unlikely that all these spirits are violent. We just need to find the ones that are."

"Hm," Sirius said. Then he asked, "Are we going to talk about it?"

Her hands tightened slightly on the steering wheel. "Talk about what?"

"What happened in Philadelphia." His voice was low, but Galloway knew she wouldn't be able to just ignore him.

She bit her lip before she said, "If you had to kill him, you had to. What does it matter anyway? It happened, Theron's none the wiser and you're still up here."

"That's not what we need to talk about."

"That's all I want to talk about," she hissed, driving faster.

"Just tell me why," Sirius pressed.

Galloway shook her head. Just because she had admitted it to herself didn't mean she would ever, ever tell him anything. He had enough power over her as it was.

"Tell me why," he said. "Why did you kiss me?"

In a startling bolt of clarity, she realized she was a hypocrite. She constantly wanted him to tell her the truth. And not just truths that were enough. She wanted everything, but wasn't willing to give him the same.

Briefly, she weighed her options and realized that the truth here would hurt her. There was nothing that said he loved her. He had made his advances and his jokes, but he had never done anything more than that.

So, in the end, all she did was shrug. "I needed to make sure you didn't shock out on me. It was either do that or hit you. I thought you'd appreciate the Austrian approach."

He shook his head and reluctantly asked, "Did you just reference The Last Crusade?"

"I watched it when I was at Logan's," she said, hoping to steer the conversation in this completely different direction.

He sighed and shook his head again. From the corner of her eye, she saw how his mouth thinned into a bloodless line. Galloway sank her teeth into her lip hard, wishing horribly that he would keep at it until the truth had been torn from her in bloody ribbons. Like that would grant her some measure of relief.

It took less than fifteen minutes to get to the asylum.

Galloway frowned up at it, tapping a rod of pure iron lightly against her leg.

In all her years on Earth and her minimal time spent in Hell, she had never seen anything that looked so much like the set of a horror movie as this asylum did. A great, hulking building made of brick, the asylum loomed above her, threatening to consume them if they dared to enter.

Two wings extended from the main hall, pocked with broken windows covered by rusted bars that leered at her like dark eyes. Galloway shivered as a stiff breeze blew, dry leaves crackling as they were swept against the building. Clouds hung low in the sky, adding to the ominous feeling of the place, and she smelled the ozone scent of an oncoming storm.

The energy in the air would make the spirits stronger.

Sirius was staring up at the fourth floor windows, eyes narrowed with menace. He didn't look at Galloway when he said, "This place smells like insanity. Madness and death."

"What's that smell like?" she asked, watching as his claws slid out to tap against the bar of iron he held. They poked through the thin leather gloves he was wearing to protect him from the pure substance.

"Death smells like what you would expect," he said snidely. She rolled her eyes then frowned when, a little more darkly, he continued, "Insanity smells like sulfur."

"Rotten eggs?" she asked in surprise.

"More like scrambled eggs," he said offhandedly, then huffed when she punched his arm. Rubbing at his bicep, voice indignant, he asked, "What was that for?"

"It's not funny, Sirius. They locked these people up and basically tortured them because they didn't understand things like depression or anxiety!" Galloway exclaimed. "Those people deserve sympathy. So do their spirits."

Sirius rolled his eyes, then waved the iron at her. "Says the girl who may or may not be destroying them completely when she hunts them."

"At least they'll be free of this hellhole," Galloway snapped. "And if it was me I'd want to be nothing before I was trapped like they are."

Sirius' eyes darkened and he turned on his heel, stalking toward the chained doors. She grabbed a small bottle of salt that could be used to draw lines if they needed a barrier, tucked it into her back pocket, then took off after him.

He didn't even ask before he wrapped his arm around her waist, yanking her through the shadows into the asylum's entrance hall. As soon as they were inside, he let go and took a step away from her, looking around.

Galloway tried to calm her heart down, then clicked her flashlight on, sweeping it around the huge, pitch black space.

Looking up, she saw that the room extended up all four stories, the ceiling out of the reach of her flashlight. She swept the beam around the room to find more brick, broken glass all over the floor and mold.

Old paperwork and trash was strewn across the floor in a thick carpet, hiding what had probably been highly polished granite or marble. She found eviscerated chairs arranged in small, huddled groups around the large space.

"This place is huge," Sirius observed, his voice echoing oddly around them.

Galloway started walking down the long hall toward a staircase, Sirius trailing along after her. The smell of rot and abandonment filled her nostrils as she looked at the weird patterns of water stains on walls that might have been either grey or light blue.

Once upon a time, the place had probably been state of the art.

Now, all Galloway could think about were the horrors that patients must have experienced within these walls. Briefly, she wondered if the doctors here had really wanted to help these people, or if they had just been satisfying any scientific curiosity that would have otherwise remained un-quenched without these forgotten people turned lab rats.

Part of her thought they had probably done the best they could with their limited knowledge. The other part had heard one too many horror stories involving torturous so-called cures and lobotomies.

She started up the stairs and said, "Research suggested that the third floor is the place to be."

Sirius just hummed in acknowledgement, peering down each hallway as they came to the first floor landing, then the second. Just before they reached the third floor, she grabbed his elbow, making him look down at her.

"There have been claims of a couple different voices. Shadow figures, one full-bodied apparition of a man dressed like a doctor. We know at least one of them is violent. Can Hellhounds be possessed?"

"Can Collectors?" he asked. Without letting her answer, he shrugged. "No one's ever tested something like that. Maybe. But I doubt it."

She groaned quietly and said, "I wish you'd told me that. I have anti-possession charms in my car."

Sirius just snorted. "I'll be fine. Now, the picture made this place look way smaller and I don't care to spend all night here. So you go that way and I'll go this way. Shout if you find something."

Galloway tried to snag his sleeve, but he slipped past her, heading down the western wing. She hissed, "Sirius!"

But he had already been swallowed by the darkness, leaving her on her own. Galloway spat out a string of curses, then turned toward the east wing, sweeping her flashlight along the row of solid metal doors. Hesitantly, she examined one of the doors then smiled wanly when she realized they were solid iron. Or at least mostly iron.

Well this place had one thing going for it.

The bar of iron held low and ready, Galloway made her way down the hall, giving each cell a quick sweep. She made it about a quarter of the way down the corridor when her breath frosted in front of her and the flashlight flickered.

"Come out, come out, wherever you are," she muttered, putting her back against one of the doors, the bar of iron held defensively in front of her.

The air in front of her shimmered, then a young woman with tangled hair and blood pouring from the corner of her left eye appeared in front of Galloway. The spirit stared at her for a long moment, then jabbered soundlessly at her, pointing back down the way she had come.

When Galloway just shook her head, the ghost wiped at the blood on her face and flickered out. Biting her lip, she continued down the corridor but found nothing save that one spirit. With a sigh, she turned to go back and find Sirius, then stopped when she heard something whisper behind her.

Galloway turned slowly to the open door, the black space yawning wide. The flashlight went out and the hair on the back of her neck stood up. She quickly unscrewed the cap on the bottle of salt halfway, then waited.

Galley, the bodiless voice whispered. She stumbled back a step, her eyes going wide and her breath catching.

Galley girl, it said using her father's voice and his nickname for her.

"Son of a bitch," Galloway hissed, then leapt forward and slammed the door shut between herself and the spirit.

The flashlight sprang to life and she sprinted back down the length of the corridor. It stretched before her, leading into darkness like in a nightmare. The ghost of the young woman flickered along with her, like she was guiding her toward the heart of the blackness.

When Galloway reached the stairs, she took a second to stare at the spirit.

"Did you die here?" she asked.

The ghost just nodded and Galloway whispered, "I'll set you free."

The young woman stared impassively at her, then flickered out again.

Galloway shook her head, then started running down the west wing corridor.

"Sirius," she hissed, peering into each room as she passed. "Sirius!" she repeated with greater intensity when there was not an immediate response.

Vaguely, she could make out the end of the hallway. Her heart decided to take up permanent residence in her throat when there was no sign of Sirius sweeping what was left of the hall in from of her.

"Sirius!" she shouted. "Come on. Answer me, dammit!"

She gasped and stumbled when the flashlight cut out again, the sudden absence of light leaving her completely blind for less than a second.

Then she was being flung across the hallway. Galloway slammed into one of the water-stained walls before hitting the floor with a painful thud. Rolling to her side, she yelped as her shoulder throbbed, the bone dislocated by the severe impact.

The smell of ozone surrounded her and she was being picked up, only to be slammed back into the wall and held there, a very solid, corporeal hand pinning her there by the throat.

Her shoulder screamed when another hand wrapped around her bicep, keeping her shoved against the wall.

Her heart slammed into her ribcage, her pupils expanding as adrenaline dumped into her veins, fizzing through her with a painful tingling sensation as the hair on her arms stood up.

The flashlight flickered back on, giving her just enough light to see.

She looked up into Sirius' murderous eyes.