Onboard the good ship Bebop

Sometime after Session 26

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, we know the whole deal. You were trying to keep us outta your syndicate shit. It's appreciated, honest. But you ought to know we're here to cover your back, you ass. What's the point of having comrades when you plan to fight solo?"

…

"It pissed me off, you know? I had no other place to go. No one else I know or can rely on. And you just waltzed off to maybe die. You didn't know how that was all gonna end!"

...

"Sometimes I think you wanted it all to end. Well. That's just too damn bad I guess."

…

"Jet hit up Doc pretty much as soon as you left. Asked him to nip in and scoop you up if possible. He badgered me into taking the mostly broken-down Hammerhead and running interference. You're just lucky I'm a very distracting individual. I mean, I was gonna come after you anyway - just, borrow his key and duck out. This worked much better!"

…

"Heh, we put you in the old fogeys home for the first week or so when you were in a coma. By the way, you're welcome. The doctors wanted to freeze you but I said no. I knew you'd pull through on your own. And now look at you! Back on the Bebop and well on your way to being your snarky asshole self."

…

"Got the Swordfish back finally. Had to wait until they declared it abandoned and sent it to a scrap yard. Cost us more than the damn thing is worth to get it back too, ya know!"

...

"Jet is driving me crazy with his new pet projects. He's got plants in every room of this stupid ship now. Guess it's good for our oxygen levels but I'm tired of having to water everything. Wake up and start pitching in on chores, hey?"

…

"Ugh, wake up, Spike. You've been sleeping too long."

...

xxx

He could have killed me. He should have killed me.

The laceration from the katana was far beyond superficial yet not quite lethal and that was purely by intent.

Was it because Vicious wanted to be the only one able to wake with Julia from the dream?

Was it because he was somehow aware that he had gone mad? A terrifying evil unleashed upon the planet that had to be put down.

Vicious had always muttered about sharing the blood of an animal. Claimed he and Spike were as ruthless and ravenous as rabid wolves. As heartless and lethal as venomous snakes.

Spike didn't know shit about wolves or snakes but he knew that he and Vicious hadn't been similar in a long, long time.

Why was it that Julia could humanize one man while turning another into a horrifying beast? Not that it was her fault. None of it was her fault. None of it was any of their faults. The world was a place of misery and struggle and people did what they had to in order to survive. Vicious had been shaped by his environment the same as the rest of them. Was that fate?

Julia had been no innocent, but she had been the best and brightest part of Spike's life when it was the darkest and bloodiest it had ever been. She made him want to go on living. Suddenly survival meant something. She represented hope and possibility and potential. Her interest in him and her affection towards him made him feel like he was worth something. He mattered beyond the work he did for the Van. He mattered to someone.

She had abandoned him though. Or had she, in the end?

Now he knew… When ordered to kill him, she fled instead. Left him to go out in a blaze of glory alone. Killing himself off had felt deeply right. Spike Spiegel, syndicate dog, Julia's dirty little secret, Vicious's ex-partner ex-rival, Mao's golden boy… that mafia man was dead. Any dreams of running away with a golden haired woman were dead too.

He had moved aimlessly through the solar system waiting to find a new direction. He got blackout drunk one night when he felt sufficiently removed from everything that had gone down in Tharsis - as safe as he imagined he'd ever feel again. He woke up in a shaman's tent on TJ and left with a head more confused than when he'd actually come to.

But the old man's prophetic words led him to Jet and that had in turn led to some of the best years of his life.

Roaming the cosmos on the razor's edge between thriving and surviving. They did a lot of good in their time as merely a badass duo. The solar system had been undergoing exploration and colonization for decades prior to the Gate Incident and that alone had been the better part of a century ago. The universe as everyone knew it had grown beyond anything people had ever dreamed and it was impossible to police that kind of oil spill of humanity. Nevermind the issue with corruption in law enforcement, there was so much crime in the galaxy there were always outlaws to chase down and apprehend.

He had to admit that life had gotten much spicier once Faye arrived on the scene. She crashed into their lives and suddenly everything was more animated. She was sharp witted and sarcastic, uncouth and dramatic, bold and unrepentant and fun. But she was also manipulative, self serving, quick to bail on them when things were too dull, and often strove to be as lazy as Spike prided himself on being. Probably they shared too many vices altogether.

But she kept him on his toes and gave back as good as she got whenever they got into arguments or caught up in shooting insults back and forth. She could outsmoke and outdrink him and Jet both, but competent as she was she couldn't outshoot Spike with his cybernetic ocular advantage. Impressively though, she could actually win card games against him without having to cheat.

The one thing he could acknowledge readily was what he considered her foul-weather perseverance. She was the opposite of a fair weather friend because she was there when the chips were down but all too often she seemed uncomfortable when things were good and that's when she'd do a cut and run. No matter how many times she'd jumped ship it had never been when they were in a state of emergency. She leapt into action just as quickly as he did when it was time to make moves. She'd claim to be motivated by the woolongs of the bounties but it was her commitment to her teammates that truly had her putting her butt on the line without hesitation whenever necessary. She'd deny it vehemently but she showed her true colors in spades.

And she was a far better nursemaid than Jet. As far as a field medic goes, Jet was aces. Spike had relied on the older cowboy to doctor him up countless times over the years. They tried to avoid having to see Doc if possible and not just to save on woolongs. Time served in the ISSP had given Jet military skills but also a decent amount of medical knowledge and capability. He was the one who handled all the stitching because Faye argued that she didn't have the patience for it and Spike was typically the recipient of the medical care.

But Faye was the one who stayed with him to make sure he kept breathing. She was the one who changed his bandages and handled the needles if he needed an IV. She sometimes spoon-fed him if his jaw or hands were too jacked up. She monitored his temperature and insistently pushed him to recover so he could retaliate to her perpetual teasing.

He'd put her in the position a handful of times now. Thanks to Vicious, thanks to Vincent, thanks to Tongpu… Faye had been the soft voice filtering gently through his painful dreams. Faye had been the peaceful humming that helped him relax and drift without thought or sorrow. Faye had served as his connection to the conscious world, anchoring him to life and reality.

Sometimes his tired mind tried to blur them together.

Julia, sitting sadly at the window.

Faye, playing a lonely game of solitaire.

Their musical voices overlapping, weaving together like instruments complimenting each other's sound. He let his mind indulge itself.

He had mourned Julia a time or two. In some ways she'd died as much as he had. She had made the choice to flee alone and he had mourned her then. Mourned that their love hadn't been enough to persuade her to give it a go with him. They could have at least tried to run away together. And yet he could never cut her out of his heart. Couldn't regret the choices that had led him to a life on the run. Couldn't keep from hoping that one day… perhaps on a planet far from the brutal reach of the Red Dragons… they would meet and it would be like no time had passed at all.

Staying celibate for her hadn't been so much an active choice as just an inevitability given who he was. Women were beautiful creatures and he felt no shame in looking, but since his heart had gone down in flames in his former life...he just hadn't found anyone worth sifting through the ashes to try and spark something new.

When Vicious had learned Spike was indeed alive...that had been dangerous. Each day left in peace after that bloodbath at the cathedral had been like a stay of execution. It had given him a revived dread and reminded him that his past was lurking in the shadows just waiting to trip him up and slit his throat if he let it. But it hadn't changed the way he had thought of Julia. As the dream of love, lost.

It made him horribly sad but that was all. Their story wasn't even the saddest story he knew off hand. And who had they been fooling anyway? She had kept him human and he had given her the love she despised craving. They had been each other's oasis in the torment of life.

When Julia was alive it was easy to drift along, hoping their lives would intertwine once more.

When it came to Vicious there was no hope involved, only the stark knowledge that their lives would intersect time and again until one or both was dead.

A world without either of them, without Mao or Annie or Shin or Lin - with all ties to his former life dead and buried - and suddenly he was more adrift than he'd ever been before.

Yet that was false.

He had been rescued, after all.

The oddballs he'd shared the most recent years of his life - they had come through for him when he'd most needed it and couldn't ask. It wasn't their fight, even though they were caught up in the crossfire. Hell, just knowing his sorry ass had meant their lives were forfeit unless the Syndicate was razed to the ground.

Rising through the floors of the building, rising through the ranks of Syndicate soldiers, every level reached and person murdered meant his crewmates were safer. Meant Julia's tragic death had more of a lasting and positive impact on the world.

Vicious had started a bloody coup but Spike was the one to finish the violent revolution.

And now he was here. Acclimating to existence. Wallowing in the grief of a dream that ends in tears.

When Faye had passed along that message… discovering for sure that Julia was still alive and well - perhaps had even been yearning for him all these years - that had knocked him off balance.

Having the opportunity to catch up to her at last. To hear her voice. To be in her presence. To have one more chance at their happily ever after… even if they both knew there was no future they could share…

It had broken something in him that he had thought was shattered so many years before when he escaped the Syndicate by playing dead.

The hope.

The little voice that would remind him of the open-ended ness of their original parting.

That voice had been silenced and Spike wasn't prepared for the awful quiet that followed. Hadn't understood that the voice had been a constant whisper in his heart until all he could notice was its utter absence.

To finally close that chapter of his life was exhausting.

It had been physically debilitating and was now putting him through an emotional wringer.

He had nothing but time on his hands to think and to question and to doubt and to wonder. To puzzle out why Vicious let him live. To put his memories of Julia to precious rest. To transition from agony to agony as his awareness shifted from his banged up physical form to his sorrowful heart and back again ad infinitum.

It was fucking miserable.

But…

Gradually it got better.

Or, it got easier to deal with. Perhaps he was growing inured to it all...

The past was inviolate and immovable. Over and done. No point beating it to death when it was immaterial to the future.

Life was full of sad truths like that.

And now...

His face had been bandaged for the first few days he'd been aware of his own existence continuing on but he knew his eyes had been uncovered for a while. He was just hesitant to open them. To truly return and have to face it all.

The emptiness left from the space he'd held for Julia - that was somehow less hollow feeling than it had been. It ached with depression over the life they could never have, with remorse for the struggle Julia's life had always been.

But Faye's quiet humming had started to invade his mind during his conscious and unconscious moments. Cushioning the jagged edges of the void that had enveloped him when Julia died in his arms.

Faye was talking to him right now in fact. She spent a lot of time talking to him. He hadn't been able to pay much attention until recently but the familiarity of her words made it seem like she'd been having the same conversation with him on repeat. Perhaps with subtle variations or additional information as time went by.

The pain itself - both physical and emotional - was like an ocean tide ebbing and flowing, washing up to take him out onto the waves sometimes and other times just lapping at his periphery as he lay on a rocky shore of hurt.

Her voice came to him as though she were manning a life boat and had arrived to pull him fully from the water before he could drown. He latched onto her words with as much focus as he could manage. Tried to comprehend what she was saying. Even tried cracking open his eyes and saying something in reply.

But his mouth was covered by bandages which muffled anything he tried to express. Actually that didn't make much sense now that he considered it. He'd had plenty of opportunity to take stock of his aches and pains and likely wounds. There was no twinge of agony from any portion of his face. She'd wrapped bandages around his mouth on purpose just to keep him from being able to complain.

What the fuck! That bitch!

His eyes hadn't been able to open beyond a sliver so he hadn't tried to push it. He was still exhausted anyway and knew from personal experience that healing happened quicker (or seemed to take less time) when you slept a lot. So he mumbled a few more expletives in Faye's general direction and then tried to cling to the murmur of her reply as he faded into dark again.

xxx

Saddle up for another ride, Space Cowboy!