Disclaimer: Cowboy Bebop was created by, and is copyrighted by Yadate Hajime in association with the legal entities Sunrise and Bandai. The characters are used without permission but no material profit of any kind is being made from the following work. Sunrise and Bandai reserve all rights to Cowboy Bebop material, but all of the situations unique to this work of fan fiction are property of the writer. Hiss.
Note: This fic was written seven months ago for Shae Enspira, who was nice enough to review all my Bebop fics. Praise her. The idea for it came from NickelS, who told me the significance of Spike's last name. There's a hint of slash, but blink and you'll miss it.
Seven Years Bad Luck
He never sat by windows, no matter where he went. It didn't matter how bullet-proof the glass or how high the rise, it was something he didn't do. But with the midday crowd bustling the bar and a mind requiring solitude, the white haired man made a solitary exception and claimed a sunlit seat flush with the fourth floor window.
The table he claimed was unoccupied save for an unremarkable ash tray and a glass vase that sheltered an amputated flower. He glanced at the flower critically, noting the wilted edges of orange petals and fuzzy green leaves. Papaver somniferum. It wasn't the right name, but it was the only one that came to mind as he looked away from the poppy.
The window was facing the sun, not that one could see the star through the city's horizon-to-horizon skyscrapers. Instead, his seating was lit with the redirected rays hitting other buildings, and well lit at that. He scowled habitually at the annoyance just as he did at any other issue that did not suit his satisfaction. Vicious was rarely satisfied; a disapproving look was permanently etched on his prematurely aged features.
The glare of the light on his table made it somewhat difficult to read the menu projected in the glass surface. It was of no real concern since he still hadn't learned to appreciate flavors for their individuality, but only the base value they attributed to his continued good health. Eschewing the use of his full fingertips, the wiry man brushed his nails over the menu, leaving no trace on the surface. He was content to wait for the waitress, but kept an eye on the other occupants by way of whatever reflections the sunlight did not deny the window.
The waitress did not make small talk when she approached the man with his order. She had seen his hair glisten gold and silver in the second hand sunlight and had entertained the idea of leaving her number on one of the napkins riding the tray with his order. On closer inspection, the cut of his clothes, the casual menace written on his face, she decided to keep any notes to herself.
With all due haste, she left him and his order in immediate peace. Thanks to her intuition, he declined to notice her. He wasn't focused on the window nor the street below, but somewhat unfocused so he could watch both. It was a habit survivors picked up from living on the streets of somewhere as bloodthirsty as Tharsis City.
He hardly noticed what he ate. Nothing was noted about it other than it wasn't of such low quality that he'd be forced to waste time on disgust or the knife in his sleeve. Nor was the quality wasn't so high that he'd return it with suspicion. At the end of his meal, he pushed the dishes away and, as was habit, withdrew and struck a cigarette.
Smoking casually, he returned his full attention to the window and the two scenes it showed him. To his right the bar bustled with the midday crowd. People were generally in a good mood over there; laughing, boasting, betting wildly on video mah jong. Down and to his left, the street scene was a bustling cesspool of angry drivers. It struck a rare chord in him, uncommon simply by triggering any sort of introspection.
Seemingly on cue, the background noise no longer obscured the music playing behind the room's din and smoke. The faint impulse of a snarling expression echoed on his face, but sparked little else. He slipped the cigarette between his teeth, freeing one pale hand to open the side of his black jacket and the other to withdraw a slim eel-skin wallet out of its inside pocket. He relieved some of the pressure on the fag between his teeth to suck in a calming lungful of burning smoke while flipping the skin open.
Behind a variety of security, financial, and syndicate-related cards lay the memory. In contrast to the crisp plastic rectangles obscuring it, the photograph's edges were battered and split, a testament to the fragility of Polaroids. He plucked the photo out of the back of the wallet and flipped it onto the table and put away the wallet.
Taking the cigarette from his mouth, he leaned back in his chair and exhaled a long stream of smoke. He used to feel somewhat ambivalent to the song playing in the background and the rectangular photo was one of the few belongings he thought of as personal.
Colorless eyes glanced at the small print, at the dangerous expressions on the faces therein. Julia's face was nearly featureless from the bright flash in the dim pool hall, but her bright red lips were just as clear as her black lined eyes. The lips he'd laid claim to were twisted in the sardonic expression he'd found amusing but never trusted. On the other end of the picture squinted Spike Spiegel; his face was not bleached out, though his ridiculous shock of hair bled into the dark background. Spike's lips were also twisted, but in a mock snarl. Those were the lips Vicious trusted. Perhaps... perhaps at one time Vicious could have claimed those lips, too.
He took a long pull on his cigarette, flicking his eyes quickly away to the washed out figure in the middle. The camera's flash had made short work of his own face, leaving him little more than a sketchy white shape sporting two matched pairs of black dots for eyes and his nose. Only vague lines remained to outlines his jaw and the faint line of an unamused mouth.
Inexorably, as always, he was drawn back to the face that hadn't lost itself to the flash or the dark background. He hadn't trusted her though he might have loved her, but he had trusted him. She had never been a stable element with her black leather and aprons. He'd never tried to fathom her in all her extraordinary mystery. Spiegel, as his name suggested, had been his reflection. Spike hadn't betrayed only Vicious and the Syndicate, he'd betrayed himself. Vicious had never decided exactly for which of the betrayals he'd executed his mirror.
The song was losing ground to the crowd and to Vicious' rare musings. Another long stream of transparent smoke billowed into the reflected sunlight. With casual grace, the pale man took another pull of his cigarette before sending it down in a slow arc to his ashtray. Halfway there, his hand halted. His eyes had caught Spiegel's again just as the scar tissue from a bullet's unbelievably large exit wound ached in time with the pain of a replacement scapula.
For a moment, he allowed himself to be caught, to feel the warmth of the smoke in his lungs, to hear the last strain of an old song. Then came his good sense. He snapped back to the present and snarled down at the photo. His hand continued its prescribed semi-circle, ending at the photo, pressing the cigarette mercilessly into the only recognizable face. In a parody of the Dragon he represented, Vicious exhaled the smoke he was holding through his teeth, hissing, "Bang."
His lean legs straightened, propelling him upright. With purposeful strides, he left the photo, the scene, and the unasked question. Had waking the dreamer at the cost of taking his place been an acceptable price? If he found the time to think about it, he'd give the answer, the point was to keep too busy to do so. It didn't sit well with Vicious that a reflection without a mirror was still nothing but an illusion.
(Song is 'I Mean Love Me' by Love Psychedelico, which always strikes me as a good Julia, Spike, Vicious song. )