Infinite Cold, My Only Hope
The only dream I ever lived,
Was ever trusting in you.
And through your dream and my nightmare
I still lay my head back down
To be only yours.
Chapter One
She could call for him all she wanted, she could wish for him to be alive until her dreams ran dry, she could cry for him until her tears fell empty, and she could curse him until her throat was raw, but he would never come back, he would never walk back through the doors of life again.
She closed her eyes, wanting to see memories that would shift the tides away from his death but all she saw was him, all she saw was his surreal eyes that held a distant pain she would never understand. All she saw was the world she had once lived through those eyes and his dreams that played over her and dragged her to believe in what he was. But who would ever have thought that he had been only a ghost of a love and a hate both meant for the past and not the future that they were supposed to share together?
She sighed as she stared at his tombstone. It was a heavenly white marble, one with tendrils of black swirls reaching to the center where his name was engraved. She touched the letters, searching for a part of him in the rough and smooth surface that was the only thing that stood in his remembrance in a shock of immortality that seemed utterly pointless. But she knew, even before she had begun looking, that she would find nothing but a cold rock beneath her fingers.
Raindrops fell down her fingers, streaked her face like the tears she couldn't cry anymore. They scarred the white marble, the roughly engraved letters like crystals clinging onto one of the only dreamers they had betrayed.
Why does it always have to rain when I come to see you, Spike? She wondered to herself as she placed the white rose on his grave. It had been two years since he walked out those doors, out of her life forever, and still he was part of her in her thoughts, nightmares, dreams, and memories. He became more a part of her every time she came to his grave to place a single white rose on his memory that was fading every time she reached to see his eyes in her mind.
She missed him. She missed his snide remarks, his domineering attitude, his pride, his smile, his anger. She missed everything about him. She longed to see him, longed to touch him just one more time and tell him she was sorry for making his whole life hell after he had just escaped from It's fires. She wanted to tell him that she hadn't known what he had went through, but she wished he would have told her. She wanted to cry in his arms and tell him he was the best thing that had entered her life, he was a part of her life she would never forget. She wanted to whisper in his ear he was the friend she never had, back when, then, and never again.
And through it all she hated him with a hate so deep it made her eyes dark and black with rage and emotion she only wished she could hide. Through all the good things she wanted to say to him, she wanted to scream at him. To scream the question why over and over again in his face. Why didn't she understand? Why couldn't he make her understand? Why did he go? Why was he so filled with pride? Why didn't her friendship matter? Why couldn't the Bebop save him from himself? Why couldn't he just forget? Why? Why? Why?
She pounded the soiled ground with fists that meant nothing to an earth that would never die. But she was dying, she was fading with every day she lived and breathed. She was slowly loosing faith in a world that had never wanted her in the first place. She was loosing faith in the people who only knew how to hurt and betray, lie and steal the only thought of love away from a trustworthy heart.
Life was pointless. She knew that. She knew people hated, killed, cried, and never would she understand why. She knew he had been just another of life's mysteries that eluded her, and she stopped caring along time ago. Caring had been pointless when all one got was hurt in return for caring too much.
Two years since she learned that lesson. Two years since she had stopped caring.
She stood, tired, pained too much for words. Every time she visited his bed of eternity she felt weak, not wanting to go on anymore even though she knew she had to. She felt guilty for having the right to live even though he didn't. But she knew that time wanted her, and would have her in the next moments that turned from hours, to days, to months. Soon her grave would be just another pillar in a darkness where no one understood and no one cared.
She stared down at the white petals of her once perfect rose and frowned with disdain as mud streaked it's heavenly glow. She knew that some part of Spike's death had been her fault, that everything that she touched turned black with pain or death. She tainted his life with hers somehow. She didn't know how to keep things perfect. She was like a black seed that pained as well as hurt ten times more than normal people, and to think that she had something to do with his death ... it made her want to cry ten thousand tears and scream to an eternity that hated to be yelled at.
Maybe it was the guilt, maybe it was the sadness, maybe it was the lack of caring but Faye had found herself joining the crime syndicate Fyre a year ago. Wondering, as she stood before the doors, what the hell it was going to be like to be controlled instead of being the one controlling. But the blood there had killed the better part of her. The killing, the hating, the screaming, the fires, the hell that a syndicate was, had killed everything that he had left in her, and now all she knew was pain and how to cause it. She didn't know how to take it away.
She sighed as she stared around the graveyard, the clouds gray and everything else so bleak that she didn't know if she was more indifferent than the world. Lightening flashed once and the stars above peered through the clouds for an instant before settling back down into their foggy blankets. The tombstones around her glared at her, yelling at her for bringing her unholy form among their lifeless breaths. They wanted her gone, out of their midsts that condemned her very soul.
The phone broke the silence of the endless rain and voices as she took her cell phone from her pocket. "Hello?" She asked as she answered, her voice so distant, so tired.
"Julia?" The voice asked.
She felt frozen when she heard that name, the past shaking off her shoulders as she tried to keep her mind focused on the present. She had chosen to call herself Julia, in remembrance of him and in remembrance of the past that she didn't want to forget. After all, his death had started when he fell in love with his that woman, that crazy beautiful goddess Faye wanted to be.
"Yes?" She asked trying to hide her weariness behind a cold wall of emptiness.
"You have a new assignment." The voice was machine like, mechanic as if the words weren't real. "An assassination."
"How much is the pay?" Faye began walking out of the graveyard and down the road that was void of any feeling. The streets were bare, just like her soul. Lights were on in buildings, flickering and mocking the fact that she didn't have any place to go back to but the coldness of her own private world and hell.
"400,000,000 wong. But the pay should not matter because the price of forfeiting this assignment is your life."
"Who is it?" She shifted the phone to the other hand as she reached into her pocket and grabbed the key to her Red Tail. Yeah, she knew the whole sad story. If one refused an assignment the leaders would kill him or her with an injection that would keep them alive for twenty-four hours, hours spent in unbearable agony. But sometimes the missions were suicide assignments anyway and with a pay that high the assignment was most likely of that nature. Pretty damn impossible to come out alive.
"Shin." The voice clipped the name and sliced it into bits and pieces of memories.
Dread filled her as she tried to swallow the lump that formed in her throat. "What Syndicate is he from?" She found her ship parked behind the graveyard's fence as it shifted with memories of the Bebop.
"The Red Dragons."
Faye leaned hard against the cool metal of her ship. She pressed her forehead to the glass and saw silver eyes reflect before her. Vicious. Then there was another reflection and she saw Julia. Both their images merged to make her pound the glass with her fist.
"Julia, are you all right?" It was a new voice on the phone, one she sighed to hear.
"Yes, Lexi," She said as she opened her cockpit. "Is the headquarters here on Mars?" She asked as she pulled back her hair and tied it in a pony tail. Her heart beat with a nostalgic breath as she lowered the hatch and began to change into dry clothes. She grabbed the extra pair of jeans and shirt from the bag she had next to her as she hooked her phone up to the speakers in her ship.
"Yes. We have men there already and we also have an appointment set under Caroline Decorum to meet with Mr. Shin. You will go in, meet with him, kill him and get the hell out of there. The soldiers will be there only for back up shall you need it." Lexi sounded worried as she gave her instructions.
Faye smiled as she pulled her shirt over her head. "Don't sound so worried, Lexi. I will make it through this. I always make it through, don't I?" Faye asked trying not to hide her own frustrations. She didn't want to go to the Red Dragons, she didn't want to face an element of the past that she just wanted to forget.
"I have a funny feeling about this, I don't know why," Lexi said softly as Faye started her engine. "I'm sending the coordinates to the Red Tail."
Faye sighed and lay back as her screen blinked on and the engine registered its location and destination. "Thanks, Lexi," she said as she sat foreword and brushed some left over rain off her forehead.
"Be careful, Julia."
Faye didn't reply as she cut off the transmission and headed to the Red Dragon's headquarters. "If I have to die it might as well be my past that kills me," she muttered as she steered her ship to destroy the group he died for.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
"Julia," the soldier said bowing slightly. They stood outside the building with ten others as they watched her shake hands with the lieutenant. He handed her two guns, ten clips and a few grenades. She geared up in the rain hoping that she wouldn't have to use barely any of it.
Cars raced by, not noticing that they stood ready to fight to the death as high buildings loomed over her shoulders showering her in shadows.
"Are you ready? I want to get out without getting killed," she said not with enough conviction. She put her cowboy hat on, one that covered her face with shadows. She tugged her trench coat around her tightly, concealing most of her body and slipped on her sun glasses.
"Yes, ma'am. You have our lives should it come down to that." He bowed again as she walked foreword and stepped across the street through the glass doors of fate. She felt a light headiness, a feeling like she had just stepped into something pleasant yet scary and angry as she walked on high heeled army boots. The people around stared at her for a second before going back to what ever they had being doing before, causing her to sigh in a premature feeling of relief.
Her footsteps were light on a glass floor and they echoed through the large building like fading fragments of time. The walls around her were a deep black marble and the floor below her was a dark gray. Cheery place, she thought idly. She walked up to the service counter and smiled a sweet smile to the secretary behind the desk. "I'm Caroline Decorum, here to see Shin." She said slightly worried that everything around her was going to fall apart and she was going to be dead before she got to count to one.
The secretary typed and nodded. "Top floor. Take the elevator," she said motioning to two doors to her right.
She nodded as she walked over to them and pressed the up button, nervous to make a wrong move. She waited only a few seconds before the door opened and she was stepping in, pressing floor 17 as she watched the doors close and seal her fate. Fate was playing with her. She knew it was mocking her, screaming in her face just like she wanted to do back to it but couldn't. But she couldn't care about that now, she couldn't cloud up her objectives with ideal thoughts that made those same objectives pointless.
She couldn't but she was.
The doors opened and she stepped into an office, large enough to fit three houses filled with people. The only things inside was a large desk, a window for a wall, and a plant in the corner. The chair was facing her as she walked inside, feeling more tired and more aged than she could ever remember feeling. Maybe it was time to end it all, maybe it was time to end everything, the pain, the sorrow, the memories that were so confusing and faded she couldn't tell nightmare from the forgotten.
The man sat in the chair, his hands folded as he stared at her with brown intense eyes. "Hello, Miss Decorum." His voice was soft and kind. He seemed so much kinder than he should have been.
She didn't say a word as she reached into her coat and took out a gun, pointing it straight at his chest. "Hi," she said coldly.
He didn't flinch as he sat back and reached his hands under his desk. She knew he had pressed a button for security, and she knew they would be there any second. Her only thought was, Let them come.
"Why would you shoot me, Miss Decorum?" He asked as he stood. His voice was so soft... Softness, gentleness, it all couldn't be trusted...
She dropped her gun and kicked it to him. "I don't know." She said as the doors opened behind her and she turned, abruptly kicking whoever was there in the stomach. The person blocked her kick and picked her up by her foot, knocking her hard on the ground as she fell. Then the figure jumped on top of her and pinned her hands above her head not notcing that she didn't even struggle. She knew it was time, and she was ready, she wanted it, she wanted it to end. She hated that it took so long for her to actually realize she really wanted it to end deep inside.
Her hat covered her eyes but the figure threw it off, obviously wanting to see the face of the enemy. Her eyes were closed lightly as she waited for an ounce of pain that would end her life.
"Faye?' A familiar voice asked.
She opened her eyes and almost fainted. "Oh my God," she whispered. "Spike."