To my dear readers, thank you, even if you don't review, just seeing you are reading fills me with excitement and more energy to keep writing. Do let me know what you think. I'd truly appreciate it. This is not my favorite chapter of the bunch, but we're moving into heavy plot mode, so it's a necessary evil. The next chapter should be out by the end of this week (gasp! I know).

-Brigidforest

Heroes Don't Exist

Chapter 7: Nighthawks

"Look't you," she said. "There's parts missing. You're not falling apart—right?" She brought her hand to her lips, squeezing the bottom one between her index and middle fingers. It had always been a nervous habit of hers the surfaced whenever she was trying to figure something out. "You got a girl? No, not yet. Lonesome, that's how you'll get. I was married at eighteen. Look't you. You're old now. But don't worry. Your arm, it looks fine. The right woman will get used to it."

Then he woke up, and she faded away. He hadn't dreamt in years, even less of his mother, who'd died so long ago. That morning when he went to get coffee and heard his steps echo through the entire ship, he looked at Ein sleeping next to his bowl, barely raising an eye to greet him, and then he looked at the brown crusted bottom of the pot and decided he needed more than coffee could give him.

He'd had a good family life. His mother had taken care of him. His father had stuck around until his adulthood. Jet hadn't experienced anything traumatizing enough to scar him to a sense of inevitable self-destruction. He still remembered his mother in the living room dancing to old time singers like Bessie Smith, and his father walking in, laughing at her, grabbing her and holding her tight as she squirmed away from the sweat and dirt of his day at the construction site.

You dirty old fool, she'd say and laugh. Sure, there were times when they would fight heatedly about money and bills. The worst ones were about some medical expenses that Jet didn't find out until later were precursors to his father's pulmonary edema. Complications from it took his father's life when Jet was twenty three. His mother died soon after, probably from a broken heart. She always said that the old fool was her soulmate. But that was okay with Jet. He'd seen it coming. His childhood had been good—fulfilling. His folks had been proud that he decided to become a cop. They were so damn happy when he told them that he might as well have said he wanted to be a doctor.

Weren't your earliest years supposed to shape who you'd be for the rest of your life? Was there something hidden in his past that could have somehow predicted that he'd be sitting at a bar in the middle of the day with a chunk of fake arm attached to the side of his body, clinging to him like some alien object he'd never get used to?

Jet hated these type of bars, open all day long, sheltering all the world's nobodies in one easy location. It was different altogether when he came with a mission in mind. He loved the access of this barnyard corralling its bountiful sheep. In those cases, he hadn't been one of them but an outsider who happened to inevitably drink the same lousy shots and breathe the same carbon air. It was okay that nobody guessed that he wasn't one of them, because that was exactly what he'd wanted. It was part of the hunt, part of the camouflage. But at this time he would have given the world for someone to accuse him of looking for a bounty instead of minding his own business. Looking around and seeing these harsh faces, thick muscles, and heavy voices, it was easy enough to think that you were dealing with the world's most dangerous subjects. But in most cases, danger was all in perspective. Danger is not the same as power, and all those men had no power. But the weak always present the most threat. They become unpredictable because they're so vulnerable.

But Jet Black, ex-cop, bounty hunter extraordinaire, for the first time in his life, had no reason to be at this kind of bar at that kind of hour. He drank his scotch slowly and didn't look around. He wasn't alert, or waiting for anything to happen, or somebody conspicuous to show up. He had simply ended up here, because he had nowhere else to think. He couldn't do it on his ship. There were pieces of the Hammerhead to be glued back together and hovering around them made him angry at that damn-no-good partner of his. Spike was the reason he had left the ship in the first place. Jet left with the resolve to find the bastard, and drag him back if he had to squeeze him by the neck with his cybernetic arm.

But with each step on Alba's wet asphalt, his resolve faded. He couldn't make Spike do anything. He couldn't convince him that the syndicate was all a part of the old Spike, and that this new crap didn't have anything to do with the bounty hunter that had partnered up with Jet. Yeah, that was like talking sense into a dog. Even Ein was more reasonable than that.

Cheers, he thought as his finger circled his shot glass. To the end, he scoffed and tilted his head as another swallow of scotch disappeared. He asked for another with his most disgruntled expression toward the bartender. The stiff eyebrows, tightened jaw, and flared nostrils said, I don't talk—don't even think about it. So the bartender, wearing his most elusive mode of compliance as he rubbed his five o'clock shadow, simply poured Jet another drink, knowing well that the old cop would spend another ten minutes just staring at it, but hell, he liked the quiet ones for a change.

It was four in the afternoon, and there were only ten people or so in the bar, not all shady, but some seemingly homeless. It was after the hundredth internal grunt toward the neo-jazzy crap playing the background that he realized why he'd had that dream. He belonged here, among the homeless and the fugitives, and the people who really had no place to go, no family holidays, no cousins, no uncles, no backyard barbecues. But that was the curse of the new world, no longer held in one planet but scattered across the many objects orbiting the sun. His mother was born a few months after the gate incident, fatherless, and with her mother, they were the only extant members of their family. It wasn't his fault he had no living ties. It was a symptom of the times.

At around 4:30, a few more stragglers shuffled into the bar, and among them was a young white collar in a black overcoat. He looked somber and stood out only slightly from the crowd. He asked for a gin and tonic and took a casual glance toward Jet. It was fairly obvious to Jet that he was there scouting out somebody, and he didn't try to be too subtle. Jet figured he blended enough to with one of the other syndicate sleazes. After a few minutes, the young guy took a cigarette from his coat pocket and lit it, but he never took a drag. He sat alert and watched everybody on the reflections of the bar glasses.

"It went down last night," someone said, and the white collar's face stiffened.

"Yeah, but what's it mean for us?" a second man asked. They were seating in a booth right behind Jet.

"It doesn't matter. It's change, bad change. It's a sudden fucking shift of power. It means something's gonna blow up."

"I'm not sticking around. I'm telling you. I'm out of town, see the kids. It's been a while."

Jet leaned forward and cast his eyes down. Suddenly, he realized what they were talking about. The Red Dragons. The coup had really happened, and Spike, he could be—

The young white collar turned toward Jet and fixed his startled gray eyes right on him. His hand was inside his coat.

"Get down," he said to Jet as he dropped from the stool to the ground, and then the gunshots were everywhere.

---

Options—nobody really likes them. People pretend they do, and they pretend it makes them feel better, but really they prefer structure instead. We are animals of stability. We ask for choices, but only if they come with some guidance, with a leader, a sign, a finger that points to the right path—a yellow brick road. Choices mean nothing. because there's only one way we must go. There's only one path that we could really allow ourselves to take. And it's always so much easier to have someone else tell you what to do.

Laughing Bull did not move and did not smile. It seemed as though he did not breathe. His still, tanned face belied nothing of his fortunetelling trance. He was stoic, perhaps dead. At times, he looked ancient, godly with his sunken cheeks and wrinkled skin above his eyes, and at other times, he looked like a simple old man, not a being that possessed any power.

The seconds dragged as Spike waited for Laughing Bull's revelation. It startled Spike when the old Indian's hand thrust out of his robes, but there was more waiting to be done. The sand dripped from the crumpled cracks of his fingers for minutes. His small tent became a slow hourglass until Laughing Bull finally opened his eyes. They were wet and the black of his pupils abnormally large.

"I can see it," he said. "She's come—the woman—she has no destiny, no past, no future. And yet she lives forever and ever."

Julia. Spike nodded. He waited for the interpretation.

"I have no answers for you," Laughing Bull said. Spike shook his head—that wasn't the deal. There had to be something in the sand. What the hell was he doing all that time? Sleeping?

"No, wait, where is she? What about Vicious?"

"You don't understand. You do nothing. This woman—she has lived before you and will continue to live after you."

"Okay, fine. But if you want something, then tell me at least where she is."

"I told you. She is come. She waits for you." The sand stopped spilling from his hand. "It has already begun without you."

Spike's eyes fell on the ripples of the sand that had formed on the mat. She's in Mars, he thought. He reached in his pocket and spotted his card and his pack of cigarettes. He tossed the card into the sand and then lit his cigarette.

"There's not much on there, but keep it. I won't be needing it." Spike walked out of the tent, still unsure of what he would do, but he had one of those feelings. He needed a coin. He headed toward the Bebop. Jet would have a coin. Then he would decide. He should have gone with the coin in the first place.

But he wouldn't need the coin. He realized that when he entered the hangar of the Bebop. He could smell it in the air. It was like that day in the dark of her apartment. The air was damp from the rain outside, and it felt unusually cold.

Come with me. We'll get out of here, he said.

Go where, she asked, but she meant—no, I won't go. It's not enough.

It wasn't completely dark inside the Bebop, but something was different. Everything was so still. Jet didn't come running out. Then there was the deadly silence. He entered the common room and saw Jet sitting on the couch with his right leg bandaged and supported by the metal crate in front of him. Spike was the one who would go off and get shot, not Jet. He didn't like this role reversal.

"What the hell happened to you?" Spike said. He meant to sound concerned.

"Bar brawl," Jet said. There was no, "where were you?" or "I've been looking for you" or "Why do I bother?" No angry face. No guilt-tripping lecture.

"You've been in bar brawls before. You don't get shot." Spike's skin was getting hot. He didn't feel so well.

"It happened so fast. I met one of your old friends, Shin. I suppose it was some Red Dragons that shot up the place. He must have known they were following me, or maybe it was her." Spike's eyes widened, but Jet only paused briefly to gage some reaction. "So then we duck behind the counter, bartender's dead, bullets everywhere, and we didn't see him coming from inside. Next thing I know my leg's shot, and when Shin turned to shoot back, the man was dead. She had killed him."

"It was the least I could do. I did lead them, unintentionally, to you," she said. Spike had heard the steps from behind him, but he hadn't dared to turn around. She had emerged like a ghost that had always been hidden within the metal walls.

She walked past him toward Jet and took a brief glance at his leg.

"What are you doing here?" Spike couldn't think of anything else to say, but he knew he couldn't just gape at her, or run to her, or kill her.

"I deserve that," she said.

"You two should take a walk. Catch up," Jet said—not nervously, as he usually would have been under the circumstances, but decidedly. He was kicking them out, and who could blame him. He looked terribly tired. "I'll be fine." That was his final say before he turned away from them in a sort of cold defiance.

Spike walked back out through the hallway, past the galley and the armory, past the hangar and through the dock that led to the street. Her steps followed not too close behind. By the time he reached the busy avenue, he slowed down and let her catch up with his pace. Then they walked at each other's side. Neither said anything. Neither seemed to know where the other was going, but at last, when they reached the sub station, past the cars and people strolling along with friends, in couples, or alone, all with a specific destination in mind, and past the dangers that surely surrounded them if anyone were to recognize who they were and see them together in such a way, they both stood waiting for the TRAM that would take them where they had been subconsciously heading to all along.

They got off at the first exit in the old neighborhood. Memories threatened to return, but Spike refused them passage. The rain had simmered down to a drizzle, but it was dinnertime and so most of the sidewalks were deserted. The only sounds against the wet pavement were of their reluctant steps. Spike wondered if Julia felt numb too, from the cold, or if she could even feel the water clinging to her face.

When they reached the cemetery, Spike felt Julia's eyes on him, but he kept walking and stopped only at the place he had imagined meeting her a million times in his head. It felt like so long ago.

"Annie's dead," Julia said to him, but Spike didn't register her words. He focused on the spot he had dreamt of her standing, waiting for him, where he would have given her a rose—a token of gratitude for risking her life and choosing him. Julia stepped in front of him, and with a stern expression on her face, she shook her head as though she knew exactly where his thoughts lay.

"You were always such a romantic," she said, not condescendingly but with an air of indifference. He glared at her and imagined that slight mockery in her eyes. She was demeaning their whole past, belittling all he had felt for her. He died for her. But before he could properly react, she approached him, wrapped her arms tightly around him and rested her head on his shoulders. The emotions left untouched for so long came barreling back into him. He could not move. He was paralyzed under her power once again.

"I'm sorry. I wanted to see you again. We could run away still, but not—no, I guess we can't. It's too late now." She pulled away from him to look at his reaction. He couldn't decipher her expression. All he could think of was the blue glow of her eyes, the curve of her lips, and how vulnerable and beautiful she seemed in the dim, misty light permeating the night.

"Let's go back," he said. "Let's get out of this rain."

This time, on the way back, the silence allowed little room for thoughts or emotions. The buildings loomed around them and the windows stared. The closed doors judged them in their stiff manner, telling them that Julia and Spike did not belong anywhere—they had no home. But Spike led her nonetheless to the only shelter he had left.

She entered the room where he slept (Jet had somehow wandered to his own room, but neither of the reunited lovers questioned when or how), and Spike could easily guess what she was thinking. The bare walls revealed nothing about him. The bed was messy, but it had no sense of ownership—not one object of the room did. It was dark and bleak. The only signs of him were a green pack of cigarettes and an old black jacket lying on a metal table. The room had no permanence, but as far Julia could recall, no room he lived in ever did.

He began getting undressed. He reached under his bed for his bag of clothes. She began by taking off her long overcoat. He threw her a shirt. She pulled her hair up with a hair band she had in her coat pocket. She put on his shirt but kept her wet pants on.

"We'd better find you something dry," he said.

"I brought clothes. They're in the room across."

He resented having given her his shirt, but he couldn't ask for it back now. He couldn't tell her, well then, go to your room and get your damn clothes. He couldn't ask: what hell do you want from me?

I don't want anything. Only to talk.

"We'll talk when you're ready," she said and left to her room. He didn't move to stop her. He was too angry to give her the satisfaction of pleading. She acted as though he was in some kind of emotional breakdown. He couldn't stand it, so he sat in his room for hours. He smoked only half a cigarette, letting most of it go to waste. He ignored his aching body, which to longed to be near her again. His mind fought his physical weakness. What would he gain from being near her again?

But he couldn't do it anymore. His anger had undone him into a ball of irrepressible want. He walked across the hall, into her room, barely lit by a dim recess light in the corner. His body sought hers. He grabbed her, and she did not seem surprised. He pressed his lips against hers and pried open her mouth with his tongue. She relented almost immediately if not mechanically.

Hours passed and they did not utter a single word. Their bodies touched and their breathing reverberated against each other's skin. She gave him whatever he wanted or needed. She succumbed silently to some of his most forceful bouts. It was his way of punishing her while at the same time having her. But he knew when she'd had enough. In one those pauses, she stood up, bare in the darkness, and lit up a cigarette.

"You know why I'm here Spike." She turned the small light back on. Some body part had probably stumbled onto the switch. Neither had noticed until it was over. "You can only run for so long until you've run out of energy, and it catches up with you."

"It has nothing to do with you anymore," he retorted as he sat up.

"Is that what you've told yourself?" She was ruthless.

"This is between me and him." His voice was low and deep. It was a man-to-man battle she had no business interfering. She put out her cigarette and put on a clean shirt and some pants. Then she reached underneath the bed and pulled out a black katana.

"This is unfinished business, Spike." She held out the sword horizontally in front of her. His eyes had adjusted enough to the darkness that he could see the thin light reflected in the etchings of the silver blade. It was the intricate shape of a long, serpent-like dragon. "Vicious killed him, Spike. He killed my whole family. He killed Mao, Annie, Rob, and now the Van. We're all that's left. You, me, and Oracle."

"What do you plan to do? Avenge your father?"

The white hand holding the sword fell limp at her side.

"You knew," she whispered. "How did you? No, of course you did. He trusted you. He reared you."

"Julia." He stood up. He suddenly forgot all his anger, overwhelmed by hers. He reached towards her.

"Don't touch me." She cleared her throat and put the katana down.

"We'll go together." It was his apology. They were even now.

"When were you planning on going?" She was as cold and stern as ever. It was business now.

"I'm not sure. Sometime soon. He's waiting."

"We're a part of the old Red Dragons. His coup won't be complete until we're out of the picture." Julia sat down next to Spike on the bed. She was always like that—always betraying so little of her emotions. He had never really been sure that she loved him.

"Your father—I didn't think—I thought he was a traitor. I thought you knew." He meant it. He hadn't known that Julia had believed her father was innocent, or, well, he hadn't really thought about it. Some part of him believed that Vicious had done it for Julia. He'd never questioned it.

"It doesn't matter. Not anymore." She lay down on the bed. "Let's just sleep. Just this one time, let's sleep."

It was as though he hadn't slept in years. His eyes closed and a few minutes later he was already dreaming. The images were half-past, half-future; half-pleasant, half-pain; half-fantasy, half-real. He could see himself standing by her building, a hand full of roses. It was pouring. He could barely keep a cigarette lit. The streets were empty. The alley smelled of wet garbage. That was the first time he went to see her. He didn't know what to do or how to behave. He bought roses because he'd seen it in the movies his mother used to watch. He had been so stupid.

Though his mind was unconscious, his body knew something was wrong before he even woke up. He sprung up the moment he felt the bed empty and hurriedly put on his pants. He walked out into the hall—it was still night—and then took the stairs down into the common room. He could see nothing at first, but he could hear something. As his eyes adjusted, he could make out her silhouette, then the brightness of her blonde hair, which was pulled back in a cleaner manner, until he could finally see the body suit she wore and small objects she stuffed into her long overcoat. She put a second gun in her holster and put the coat on.

"What is this?" he asked.

She turned to face him. In her hand, she held a small pistol he hadn't noticed. She aimed it at him. He didn't have time to understand, but he just felt the blood leaving his face and his heartbeat vibrating through his body. He tried so hard to see the details of her face in the darkness, but he couldn't. He could see outlines while his mind filled in the rest, but there was no visible expression. Was she sorry? Was she trying to save him? To kill him? What? What! He wanted to scream, but his lungs were failing. What was wrong with him? Stop her! Take her!

You may never understand.

He heard the click and shot simultaneously, and then felt the most horrible though not unfamiliar pain all throughout his chest. He fell backwards, and he could have sworn—really he could have—that she had to walk over him to get to the hangar door.

---

Chapter inspired by Edward Hopper's Nighthawks, 1942