Disclaimer: I do not own Cowboy BeBop, or any characters in it
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I hate this place. I hate the way the smell of smoke lingers here like a thousand phantom cigarettes. But I guess I only have myself to blame for that.
It's a bad habit, I know. You should quit, I tell myself. But I know I never will. It doesn't really matter, when I think about it. I doubt I'll live long enough for it to matter.
I can't remember when I first started to hate it here.
Maybe I've always hated it.
Yes, that seems about right.
I guess it's just something you get used to, like when you cut yourself on a piece of glass and a shard stays in your skin. In time, it heals, the skin grows over, until the whole things just a memory of blood and pain.
Sometimes, it still hurts, but never as much as it did that first time. You can remember how much it hurt then, but you can't relive it anymore, not even when you press where the wound used to be.
But it's still there, the glass, I mean. Still inside you, always being pulled, drawn in to your core, or whatever it is that makes humans tick, and think, and feel.
Whatever it is that died when he left.
I cherish those memories of pain, because they prove that I'm really alive.
Or used to be, anyway.
…
He asked me to come with him. Whatever else he said, he asked me to come with him. He didn't know how, but he knew when, and why. He said we could figure out the rest.
I said I didn't know if I could. I was so dry, so hollow, I didn't think I had the strength. I said we couldn't, we couldn't.
But he left, anyway.
He told me to meet him there. Where the dreams end, and the memories mean nothing, and there is no pain, and reality is all there is, just what's there, a blank slate to start on again.
He said, We can keep each other awake. We won't get lost in dreams anymore.
But what is there, without dreams? What is real, I know, but was does that mean? What is real? Are we even real anymore? Or are we just the lights and sounds of someone else's imagining?
I don't know, he said, and there was something so empty in his voice, something broken. I can't tell what begins where all this ends, or even if I'll ever make it, but I know I have to try. And I know I want you to be there.
His name found its way from my heart to the warm air before my lips, more sigh than substance.
And then he was there, his arms shutting out the rest of the world. He could look at me and surround me, and I could bury myself in him, and take him in as long as possible, like holding my breath, until I needed him again.
He said, I promise. Nothing bad will happen, I promise, and I wanted to believe him, with his smell of night air and cigarettes, of being alive.
Maybe that's why I loved him.
He smelt of being truly alive, out in a dormant twilight, watching life dissolve around you, trying to hold onto yourself, like water slipping between your fingers.
All of it, every word and breath, was so surreal, yet I knew it was happening, I knew there had to be more to this than smoke and mirrors, because I felt it, a quiet, yearning shock, somewhere deep in me, where that sliver of glass lay still, the part he kept alive.
I wanted to hold on to him forever, just melt away and become a part of him. I didn't even care if it was a dream anymore. I felt his warmth and life flow into me, and my heart kept beating, and for the first in so long, beyond even the most distant hazy recollection, that jumpy little pang resounded through me.
I was happy.
I whispered his name again, soft, needful, my fingers wrapped into his coat, and a piece of my soul poured into him.
Why -my voice had fled, I could barely speak- why can't I fell without you? Unless you're here, I'm so numb, like the rest the world is made of ice, and you, you're the only fire left, a living spark.
He said, It's this place. Everything's a dream. When you wake up, you'll be able to feel ever moment, and you'll know how alive you are, because you'll be able to feel it. And then you won't need me anymore, but I'll be there anyway, because you make me whole, and that has nothing to with dreams.
He didn't smile, but his eyes crinkled at the edges, and I could see lightning in them, and rain, wind, snow, stars, days of smelling grass and earth on the air, feeling the sun, warm, like it used to be, like it's supposed to be, shattering when it sets, like a bowl dropped to the floor by trembling hands, sending sparks of neon light into the powdery, darkening sky, dampened and smeared, into nights of him, and only him, his arms to warm me, our life-forces pooling around us, our heartbeats uniting, the last rays of dying light tossing themselves forward from the bleeding sun, onto wrinkled sheets and the smell of smoke.
In his eyes, I saw myself reflected in a new, purer light, like a word you only hear in prayers.
It was like the story about the boy with glass in his heart, and the girl who loved him found him in the castle made of ice, and cried and cried until her love melted the cold inside of him. When all seemed lost, she could save him with a single kiss, a seed planted in the mind that spurts a blinding white light before it dies forever.
Let's leave, he said, we'll leave here and never look back, no regrets, no loss. Just you and me, we'll soar away and meet the horizon, and no one can ever touch us.
What if we get too close to the sun? Will our wings melt away into useless lumps of wax again?
He told me I was better than this place, the first one to say it, and believe it.
Am I? Sometimes I think I was made for it.
Don't –and his voice would grow stern- don't talk like that.
But it was the truth.
He said, Come with me. After all else, the lies, the secrets, he said, Come with me.
I said I didn't think I could. I was so scared –did he think they would let me?- I didn't have the will.
But he had to leave, and I had to let him.
And then he was gone, and all I had was the pain.
I was so empty, but it hurt so much.
Like a little piece of glass, never leaving, never growing, just that comfortable, throbbing ache, the kind you only notice when you think about it. And every time you think about it, it hurts a little less.
Is it really getting better?
Or, are you just getting used to it?
Maybe it's finally reached your heart.
Where is he now? The warmth, the light, the spark boy? Somewhere out in the rain of the world, being drenched and drowned? Somewhere you can't protect him.
If you could ever protect him, anyway.
…
I should have known he was only a dream. He was too wonderful, too beautiful, too perfect to be true. He held me too close, made my heart beat too fast, loved me too much.
That's why I lost him. I let him wake me up, and he faded away.
I found, then, that I didn't have anything anymore.
Just a will to sleep, to make everything better, to never want to wake up, to find a place where I could never know, never leave, but where at least I'd have him again.
A crown of steel against my hair, pressing into my skin, digging into me.
An anger settling on my shoulders, smothering, smoldering.
Just that, and this place.
…
He, not that one which I loved, but brutal, merciless, vicious, all seven deadly sins and a sword, he broke. One had finally escaped, and the other saw red.
He pressed the barrel to my skull, his finger making the trigger tap, trembling with rage.
So, -his voice was the agitated growl of a sleeping lion, the roar of a distant train,- you thought you could betray me? Thought I wouldn't notice?
He put all his rage into it, his new metallic hand, I felt it cut into me, and blood trickled like a falling star, down my temple, and his finger steadied.
I closed my eyes, Go ahead, and I didn't let my pounding heart shake my voice.
Then a rush of air to my mind, and the gun clicked to the table, an offering of freedom.
Destroy him, said the lion, or I'll destroy you.
…
He told me to meet him there. He said, by the graves, not in them. We would see it one last time, and forget it. Where we were going would be an eternity of tomorrows. We would never look back but to remember when we used to only have each other, so long ago, -remember when?- never look far enough ahead to worry about that place, where you mourn what used to be, what might have been, where you remember then because now is too horrible to bear.
One more time, he said, Just one more time.
How could I make sure it was the last place he ever saw?
Just one more time…
Then I would be the one, the solitary figures among the grey forgotten, trying to recall what it was to be alive, before I shot my soul and buried him six feet underground.
He would be waiting for me, long coat, hopeful eyes, that stupid yellow shirt… and he would smell like cigarettes.
I'll quit, he told me, We'll both quit. But I knew he wouldn't. Neither of us could. Maybe it doesn't matter, anyway. Besides, it was such a part of him that if he stopped smoking, he might stop being him.
It was raining, how long would he wait? Pouring, drowning, dragging rain, the kind that steals away in the middle of the night with tiny villages no one's ever heard of tucked neatly under one arm, not leaving a trace besides a misplaced shoe, a pile of splintered wood.
Would the ground be all mud, yet? Were there streams of slimy pulling at his shoes?
How long would he wait?
I watched the world through a frame, that same, dingy view of empty streets outside a pane of glass.
Could I do it? I would finally be free from this place, but, considering the price, was it worth it?
Could I honestly face him for the last time, hold out the gun, and bury a bullet in the only person I've ever cared for?
Could I bear the pain, the hatred, the utter despair in his eyes?
He would freeze, stiffen, fall…
Would I honestly be able to walk away while my reason for living bled out into the dirt? While his eyes glazed over, the images of wonder I so longed for sealed forever behind the dull sheen of barren promise?
Could I really just leave? All my hopes, our plans and dreams of leaving at last, of being together somewhere far away, would die with him, snuffed out like a candle.
I would walk until the silent shapes of the cemetery faded into the curtain of rain behind me, and then what?
I would never see him again, and it would be all my own fault.
Could I do it?
I locked the windows and door.
Keep me in, I whispered, Never let me see the light of day, never move, never feel.
But let him live.
It was raining, how long would he wait?