Promontory Point
Disclaimers: Cowboy
Bebop belongs to Sunrise and Bandai Entertainment.
Warnings: There's some
shounen-ai stuff. ^_^ Gren and Vicious!! Vicious... *_*
Radishface
*
"If I didn't know any better, I'd say you were--" A man with red hair frowned as he stared at the tent flap, his brow creased. The other occupant turned his head to look at him.
"What?"
"You make me sick sometimes, Gren." The man with red hair said, spitting. "You make me sick."
"What did I do?" Gren stared down at the ground, the hard, hard, ground, and turned his foot in the dust. His sleeping bag lay in one corner, forgotten. He never slept. He wandered around all night. His tent-partner snored most of the time. And he didn't sleep. He wandered. He wandered around, always kicking the dirt, always walking past the fires lit late at night, always ignoring the others, and always walking to a promontory where he'd just sit there and wait for the sun to rise. He wondered if that behavior annoyed his tent-mate. He wondered if that was why that made him sick. But he knew that wasn't it.
"It's the way you look at that one guy." He spat again, this time at Gren's feet. "That stupid ghost. He never talks. He just sits there and sits there and he doesn't sleep either. He just sits at that stupid cliff and waits for the stupid sun to rise. As if the sun can rise." He spat again, this time, where Gren's sleeping bag was. "He's dead, and you make me sick. You look at him like--"
"Like what?"
"Don't talk to me like that." He said, standing up and pushing the tent flap open. "Don't even talk to me. You're sick. You're fucking sick."
Gren only stared at his retreating form. He wondered why that guy never kicked him like the others did. They always kicked him and punched him and they would throw him in the dirt and then they'd step all over him like a welcome mat. Welcome to step on him. Welcome to jump on his back and break it. Welcome to break his arms and legs and bash his skull into tiny pieces. But they couldn't break him.
He was deserving of it, though. He had asked for it.
Gren's fingers hesitantly ran over the music box hidden in his coat pocket, almost as if to reassure himself.
*
The sky was yellow and orange and red, like it always was, and a cold wind blew. It was cold on Titan. But he didn't feel cold. The sands swirled around him and sometimes they got in his eyes but he'd just blink them away and they'd either fall or not fall out, it didn't matter. The view was always the same. It was all warm shades of colors.
"Why are you here?" The same, cold voice-- he had always heard, had never heard, had barely heard, seemed to drift towards him. His eyes were looking at something far off; he knew he had a faint smile on his face. He looked like a fool. And he was smiling, like everything was all right. It wasn't.
"Do you want me to leave?" He said back, pulling the turban over his eyes. The winds were blowing harder now. He wanted to keep the sand out of his eyes. "I can leave if you want me to."
You can just pull the puppet strings and make me walk away.
He could smell the dust, the faint musky odor of the men from the camp, and he could hear the soft rumble of voices from the camp, and he could hear the things they would be saying to him. They didn't like him, for some reason. Nobody really ever did. He was quiet and kept to himself. But he was satisfied with that. He didn't have to be happy. God knows when you were happy you had to pay the price somehow. And now he was happy for some absurd reason and he hadn't paid the price yet. Karma, they called it. Well, karma hadn't rung the doorbell yet.
The cold voice didn't answer him. He wanted to hear it, even if it told him to go away, get out. He never heard it enough. He never could hear it enough.
Shoes scraped and he felt somebody sit down next to him. He wondered why he wasn't being kicked right now. He should be kicked. He should be broken and called faggot and sick and fucking son of a bitch. But he wasn't. The voices of the men back at the camp grew fainter and fainter and the smell got fainter as well and then he couldn't even feel himself or see anything. It was like he was wrapped up in grey. Grey uncertainty and grey happiness. Happiness should have been a bright color, he though. Like the yellows and oranges and the passionate red that showed themselves in the sky all day. But this happiness was grey and blue and black sometimes. It was a desolate sort of happiness. The hopeless kind, if there was such a thing as that.
He pulled out his cigarettes, and lit them. They smoke floated up and away, but he didn't pay any attention to that.
"You know," He said, trying to start a conversation even though he knew it would fail miserably. "I never got your name." And the instant he said it he knew he had said something stupid. The names didn't matter. The names were just names. It was the things that the person did and how they were and what they were like-- those were the things that mattered when remembering someone. But this man never said anything or did anything worthy of remembering. Maybe that was the something that deserved to be recalled upon. This was a man who unconsciously pulled the strings behind the puppet, not realizing it. Maybe he realized it and he was pretending not to know. Maybe it was a game, all of it. A cruel game, with him as the victim. He enjoyed that.
And the man with the dead eyes who he hadn't known the name of suddenly looked startled, as if he had never been asked a question like that before. But when he blinked, his expression had returned to the normal, same, dull, dead, lifeless look it always had been. He stared off at the setting sun, not blinking. How could he stare directly into the sun without becoming blind? That's because he was dead already. Nobody could die twice. Nobody could be living twice. His pupils contracted, and the wind blew, and the sand furiously swirled around in torrents, and for an instance, neither of them could see anything. And when the dust settled again, the ghostly, parched, dry lips moved.
"Vicious."
"I see."
Vicious just sat there, not moving after he spoke, and he almost looked surprised with himself for saying such a thing. And it was only his name. Only his name.
"And what's the name of that music box's song again?"
Vicious looked up, the dead in him slowly creeping back into his eyes. A wall seemed to come down as a barrier between him and what he wanted to say.
"You still have that?" It came out almost harshly, but emotionless, and in a monotone.
Surprised. "Why wouldn't I?" He pulled it out of his pocket, and gave a secret smile he though no one could see. But Vicious saw. And he didn't know what to think. It was just a music box. A damned music box with her name written all over it. But now...
Slim fingers cranked the handle gently and were held in pale hands, stripped of their rough gloves, and the barely audible melody set the sun to sleep.
*
He had a tent all to himself. Nobody was assigned with him. His sleeping bag lay in the corner, forgotten. He never went to sleep. He always would walk outside all night and sit at that cliff. Gren was always there before him, every night. Like he was waiting. Then they'd both stare and stare and stare at the sun and cover their eyes because the dust was always being picked up by the wind and thrown into their faces. His mind was always blank, his thoughts were always empty. He had nothing to think about. He just sat out there all night, thinking about nothing. Thinking about thinking about nothing. He never went back to his tent. It was a useless thing, just there. And he stared, off into the sky, not focusing on anything in particular-- just letting his eyes wander around, forcing his mind to remain blank. Empty. Emotionless.
The constellations laughed at him. But they didn't mean anything. They were like his music box. They were perched high up in the sky and they had a radiance to them, but he could not grasp them.
He had planned to throw the damn thing away. That damned tinkling music box. It reminded him too much of things that were too painful to be remembered. He didn't want to remember it. He wanted to remember it so he'd have a reason to kill something, crush something with his hands. He didn't care what it was. He wanted to throw the music box into the wall and watch it break into tiny pieces. Then that stupid smiling idiot with the azure eyes and the dark hair had sat down next to him and broke his thoughts. They had subsided. And he didn't know what to say. He had just sat there, looking at the music box. And suddenly, the melody seemed overpowering and the voices of the men seemed to fade away and he was left sitting there on the dirt with only the music box and the strange, smiling man next to him. Why was he there?
Suddenly, he was back in reality and the scent of the men from the camp and the noise all came back to him and the music box was just a small sound again and he wanted to break something.
He didn't deserve anything.
He had always watched from afar-- he had always watched the others kick that fool into the dirt, grind him into the dust, and he had watched him lie there after everybody had their fun, bleeding and half-dead, his skin purple and blue from the cold and from the bruises, his pale face dripping of blood and sweat and spit that the others had bestowed on him. He'd always feel compelled to do something, for some reason. But there was no reason to. Somebody would get to him sometime. And in the end, even if he helped him, that fool would just walk away. That's what Julia did. That's what Spike did.
That's what everybody would do.
It wasn't worth it. He wondered if he had done anything to deserve it. Perhaps he had. If so, he couldn't remember. Or maybe he didn't want to remember, so he forgot...
For the moment, though, he didn't want to kill anything. He didn't feel like it. His feelings were fickle, they didn't matter to him. What came to him, came. He acted on his emotions. He did what they told him. He was just another restless ghost, wandering the world, finishing his time, completing what he hadn't completed when he was living. He wasn't living now. If that were true, it was like he had never lived before. He never remembered living.
Ghosts didn't deserve anything.
But when Gren wound the music box with those slim, pale hands when they were sitting, the reds and oranges and yellows of the sky would always seem warmer, and the dust wouldn't fall into his eyes so much, and the sun wasn't as harshly bright, and he'd be able to look into it without becoming the blind man he was so used to becoming. When Gren held the music box in his hands, it wasn't Julia's song anymore. He could forget for a while. He could pretend it was his own melody. He could pretend it was their song. Just for a little bit.
Gren had fallen asleep on the ground, the music box loosely held in his fingers. Vicious stared at his figure in the bright moonlight, watching the way his chest moved up and down when he breathed. He wondered if he himself was breathing. It seemed as though he had stopped.
He took the music box out of Gren's hands and shifted his gaze to that. It was an ordinary little music box, skeletal and bony in appearance, the little gears and mechanisms packed away in the small space. The handle stuck out, almost unnatural. And Vicious took the handle and wound it, not as gently as Gren had-- almost erratically, and when he had reached the limit, and the crank wouldn't go any further, he stopped, and held his hands there, his breath coming out just the slightest bit faster. He could hear the voices of the men back at the camp come in faintly-- he could see the fires they lit out of the corner of his eyes, he could smell their sweat and the fire and the dust and then he let go of the handle.
The music box's crystal notes came tumbling forth one by one, some following each other's steps faster, slower-- there was no regular beat established, it was as if the melody was being written as it was being played. His own hands placed the music box and the melody and the song back into Gren's hands and he watched the crank unwind itself. And as it sang, the small sounds disappearing into the cool night air, he leaned back as well, staring off into space, the song getting louder and louder and filling his ears and the only thing he could see were the stars and the only thing he could hear was the music box and the sound of Gren's breaths going in and out, a sign that he was alive, and not another ghost, like he was.
The constellations were dimmer now-- the moon was so bright. They didn't mean anything. They were like his music box. They were perched high up in the sky and they had a radiance to them, but he could not grasp them. But he could pretend he could.
His eyes scanned the sky of endless black and blue and settled on one particular cluster of stars, and he thought:
That one's the Space Lion.
*