Disclaimer: I do not own Cowboy Bebop or characters.
Different Sides of the Same Coin
We are the same, you know, Spike Spiegel.
We are mirrors of one another.
I'll be dead before I'd admit that out loud though. Same would apply to you, but it's a bit late for that now, isn't it?
But, hey, I'll speak to you now, as if you're still here to hear these words.
You see, as much as we both denied it; we are both searching for the same thing, for the same reasons. We are both absorbed by our pasts.
You cannot escape yours, and mine eludes me.
You have this vision of a woman. Blond hair cascading down her back in gentle waves, seashell eyes and a windy smile. She is gentle; calm amongst the chaos you surround yourself with. She is pure, in your eyes, a refuge, a sanctuary. Something that cannot be touched with stained and bloodied fingers.
That's how you remember her; that's how you hold her in your mind. The vision of her, sitting serenely aside a gloomy window, watching the raindrops traces its way down the glass pane. Her back is turned to you, isn't it Spike? So you can only glimpse her sad reflection on that gloomy pane.
She eludes you, in your memories and in the flesh.
I know this, Spike, but you've never told me. I pick up more then you realize, and I could read you like an open book if I really tried.
I have a vision too. It's much hazier then yours, much more elusive. There's more then one of them too. They are the fragments of a smashed mirror. If I could gather them up and put them together then only I would be whole.
But I know this is never going to happen. The mirror will always have splintered cracks running through it, no matter how carefully I try to glue it together.
So I strive to hold those fragments, even if it gives me but a glimpse of who I used to be, some inkling of my unknown past.
A stone white dragon fountain, spewing forth water with fierce eyes.
A young girl of thirteen with bright eyes and a carefree smile dances before my eyes.
Do your best, do your best. GooooOOO ME!
She slips away again; lost under the harsh façade I give my self.
I said I had remembered it all, and for a while, I did. But who remember everything about their past? Our brain deletes the small, unimportant details to make room for more memories. I'm finding that it's all fading away again, slipping straight through my fingers.
For I will never be that carefree girl again.
And you will never have your Julia again. Not in the same way it was. It will never be the same, for both of you. Your passion has grown old, weary and bruised. You both hold too much regret, guilt and anger between you both.
Should I be sad for you?
No.
It is apart of you, Spike, and my regrets would serve no purpose. Besides, I am a selfish person; I keep my regrets for myself.
I have no room for you here, Spike. And you hold no room for me either. We are both far too self absorbed in ourselves to fill the others void.
Sorry, lunk-head, but it would off never worked between the two of us.
We're far too alike.
You act as if all women are like you. They're not, you know.
Your wrong there, Spiegel, we're all alike, us females. We all want to be wanted. We all want to be needed.
Being needed is not the same thing as being loved, you know. The fairer sex has a long history of being loved, down trodden, of being needy and rescued. Lost damsels in hidden towers. It is the old story we all know. The woman needs a hero, needs to be saved.
Nobody needs her.
I need to be wanted, Spike. So does your Julia.
Why do you think she didn't meet you that night in your murky past? She wanted to save you, and for once it was she that had to do the saving and not the hero. You needed her to save you and you didn't even know it.
I don't want love, not like Julia did. She was your underworld angel but she wanted and needed you and your love.
I want to be wanted though. That's why I can't leave this old rust bucket. I'm always drawn back here. There's a place for me here, or, there was.
It was never quiet the same after you died, Spike. The Bebop was too empty then, too hollow.
You noticed it too, didn't you? When Ed left. I wasn't there, but I guessed as much. She left just as much of an empty space as you did.
And now I'm gone, all Jet has left now is a hollow shell full of echoes of the people he once knew.
It must be very silent for him.
I'm not going to my death; I'm going to see if I was ever alive.
You lied then, you know. You knew damn well that you wouldn't be returning. And I knew to. But this time, it wasn't for me to go in and rescue you.
If I was, would you come and rescue me?
You don't need rescuing, Spiegel, you don't need salvation. Any help that I had to offer you was unwanted and declined. You didn't want me saving your sorry arse every time you got cut up or chewed on.
No one gave me permission to care about you.
No one gave you permission to care about me, either.
Because we did care, didn't we? It doesn't matter if it was as siblings, as lovers or as friends, it was all one and the same in the end. It was why you told me to have a future; it was why I told you to forget the past.
It was why you told me that small fragment about yourself before you left. It was why I let you leave.
You said you could only see small fragments of reality, as if you were in a dream. I could of thought you had just been in space too long and that your mother dropped you on the head as a kid, but I didn't, don't. I think you made that story up to cope with your grief.
Because you were grieving for Julia a long time before she actually died.
The same way I was grieving for myself for a long time before I knew what it was I had lost and left behind.
I made a story up too, do you remember? I said I was a Romani, a gypsy by blood who couldn't stand the confines of a small four walled room. I guess it's partly true.
Like your story is.
Shall I tell you mine now?
You lived to twenty-seven, Spike. I lived to thirty-six.
I guess we were both destined to live short lives. Mere fragments in reality, is that how it goes?
At least mine was quick, that's all I can say. One bullet to the head and BAM, I'm outta there as fast as my brain is splattered on the sidewalk.
No last moments clinging onto life, no last words, no last thoughts. No, not for this cowgirl, not like you, Spike.
With both died alone though, in the midst of strangers.
It mustn't have been pretty, for Jet, having to confirm my body's identity. Having to look past all that muck and gore and smashed bone in search of a woman who had lived on his beloved ship. It must have been hard for Ed, cause I had gotten to know her, by then.
But I can't reach them now Spike, and I can't reach you.
Two sides of the same coin, lunk-head, and I don't know if I want to see you now that I'm dead as well.
I can't tear myself away from this ship; it contains the only family I could ever remember clearly. It's the same for you too, isn't it Spike. When I was alive we all knew you were still there, somehow.
Now it's the smell of your cigarettes mixed with the scent of my shampoo that haunt these halls.
We're too damn alike.
Authors note: My first Bebop fic, this was crowding my mind untill I got around to writing it.
Hope they all seem in character ect.
I've always thought that Faye didn't seem to be the type to grow old, marry and have kids. Being a bounty hunter would cut your life expectancy quiet a lot, I imagine.
Please leave a review to tell me what you think.