Yes, I have decided to trying writing in yet another fandom... bebop is just way too cool and does not get near enough attention. So this would be the beginnings of my contribution.

I intend to write a sort of series of short vignettes like this one, covering some of the highly ambiguous stuff from the series. Namely, the dynamic between Spike, Vicious, and Julia. There is just so much to work with that I couldn't resist.

And now for the warnings: spoilers for the end, a moderately angsty Spike, and some slashy undertones. (Yaoi just doesn't seem like the right word in this case.) If you're enraged by some questionable Spike/Vicious hinting, well... too bad for you.

No, by the way, these people aren't mine. Not by any stretch of the imagination. And any similarity between the breathe in, breathe out thing and the Bush song is totally coincidental. I didn't realize until I'd already written it. There, you have been disclaimer-ed.

~*~

/Breathe in, breathe out./

/Breathe in./

Spike toyed with the safety of his gun, flicking it on and off and on again.

He had to do this.

He could hate it, or even dislike it, but what would be the point? He was destined. Or something. They both were. Meant to die at each other's hands, he'd once been told. It just wouldn't be right any other way. Fate was for fools, but he didn't know how else to think about it.

And besides. He was dead already.

/Breathe out./

Trouble was, he couldn't seem to make it stick.

He sighed. Vicious himself had coined that one, the night before everything fell apart. Problem with you, Spiegel, is you just can't make death stick. They had laughed, of course, taking mirroring drags on their identical cigarettes, and Spike remembered the inflamed gaze lighting his friend's slate-gray eyes.

Vicious always looked at him that way. Even now.

Hate, but also something else entirely.

Love.

/Breathe in./

Spike shivered. There was love in those eyes.

The eyes of an old man. That's what Julia had called them, just as she'd called Spike's the eyes of a child. He never really knew what that meant before now, never understood. He'd never heard through the layers to the center of her words.

She knew his eyes.

She knew Vicious's eyes.

He slammed the clip violently into the butt of his gun, jacking a bullet into the chamber and gripping it fiercely with his right hand. His trigger finger itched, insatiable.

*His* Julia.

His *Vicious*.

Just his.

He had stopped trying to figure out any more than that a long time ago. The fight was enough, even if he *had* forgotten who was the enemy and who was the prize.

And that's why he was here, at all.

/Breathe out./

He had to remember.

Spike's vice-like fist around his weapon slackened, and he let his eyes flutter briefly closed. There was Julia, sweet and beautiful and smelling of delicate white flowers, the too-shiny waves of her golden hair swirling around her in a stray breeze, smiling at him with an unguarded beauty he'd never since seen in a face. And there was Vicious, his other half, the missing piece of his soul, an aura of frightening calm and elegance, the only man to ever make him feel anything even close to fear and certainly the only man to make him enjoy it.

Crave it, even. Need it.

The fear made him real.

Julia had done it another way, with something strange and feminine and utterly indistinguishable, but now there was only Vicious.

Only Vicious, with his level eyes and low murmurs and loving loathing.

Only one way.

/Breathe in, breathe out./

He had to remember.

~*~