Okay, sorry that this fic took so long to update. It's been awhile, but I'm
not done with it yet! You may want to go back and review what happened in
Chapter Six, otherwise some confusion may result.
If anyone knows how to put italics into this new FF format, please tell me!
This is my first chapter without any major action, and I'm frankly worried about it. I wrote it to give an insight into Lornette's, Faye's, and Spike's frame of mind at this moment, and to try and articulate their confused emotions. It sets up the action of future chapters. Anyway, I hope people like it, but if you don't, please go ahead and tell me so I can get better! Please review!
As always, you can email any responses to ckrisz@yahoo.com. I will always respond to whatever you have to say.
Thanks again!
P.S. Please allow me to pimp my other, original (well, not all that original) story on FF.net which can be found here: http://www.fanfiction.net/read.php?storyid=855970 Sorry, but it's also incomplete. Supposedly it is very CROUCHING TIGER- like. It's also a bit more bloody than this one. Check it out!
---------------------------------------------------
Hammerhead spun down the Venus gravity well, slicing through the swirling orange clouds in a glimmering flash. Lornette watched, and wondered if Spike was aboard.
Venus had a special place in her memories. Her mother had taken her on a vacation to the Turkish Market on Venus once, as her father did business in Topkapi, and she still remembered the thick black bitterness of kave coffee and the gentle eyes of the old vendor who'd sold it to her.
Vicious had come with them on that trip. She remembered seeing him for the first time, a painfully thin blond boy whom her mother said would be helping to protect them. He'd had the katana even then, tied tightly under his Dragon coat.
Her mother had laughed when the boy told them his name, and the boy had laughed too. "I'm not, it's just what the boys call me," he'd said. "I'm too skinny to be vicious." And throughout the trip he'd stuck by her side, holding her hand while her mother shopped, always smiling at her with careful, caring eyes. He'd made her feel safe even in a noisy, stranger- filled place like the Turkish Market.
He's grown up since then. Well, so have I.
Her father's last words stuck in her throat. How could he have given me an order like that? Because I came out a girl, and he always wished I was a boy? Did he think I was too weak?
The White Tigers had come for her when she was eleven. They didn't know Ho Nam's Circle like they would come to know it, and someone had thought she'd make a good hostage. The assistant principal who'd called her from the classroom had been trembling, barely able to hide his terror of the huge men behind him. It'd been her second class of the day, ten in the morning.
Her father had left two dozen White Tiger corpses in the streets by nightfall. The phone bleated endlessly in the basement apartment where they had tied her to bedposts; phone calls reporting cars bombed, buildings burned to the ground, men kidnapped, men killed. Lornette remembered feeling pity for the frightened Tigers who'd been watching over her. Her mother had showed her how to control her emotions, how to stare blankly and not give away a thing no matter how hard they looked. But these men couldn't even keep their voices from trembling as they argued over what to do with her.
There'd been one Tiger in particular; rat-faced, pale, and milky-eyed. He'd been staring at her since they'd brought her to the safe house. Her mother had taught her about this kind of man as well --- Lornette knew already that the rat-faced man would suggest raping her and exposing her body in the street to shame Chan Ho Nam before all the syndicates of Mars. She knew that he would want to go first.
The rat-faced man had been standing over her, his lips wet, while they screamed at each other. They'd still been arguing when the door blew down.
Spike Spiegel had been the first man through the smoke and tear gas, firing even as the door fell. The pistols in his hands roared as he dove to the right; wild return fire spattered the wall and ceiling. Before the gas got into her eyes completely, Lornette saw more men in Dragon coats lunging into the room. Vicious' katana flashed, bright steel slashing through the yellow fumes and a man's neck in one brilliant curve.
It was all screaming and dying men then; one young boy's voice begging for mercy; gunshots; the sound of metal going thunk! into meat and bone. She felt someone grab her, ripping her hands free from the bed painfully. She opened her mouth to shout for help, knowing without seeing that it was the rat-faced man who had her.
He'd almost managed to get his arm around her throat to use her as a shield when Vicious' throwing knife took him in the eye. Blood and mastic fluid trickled down onto her forehead, and his scream was like nothing Lornette had ever heard. She blinked furiously from the gas, crying out herself, and saw Spike fire once. The hypershock round blew the rat-faced man's head off.
Vicious had rushed to her, kicking away the corpse and wiping at her blood- spattered face with the sleeve of his Dragon coat. "Are you okay!?" he'd shouted through the din, and she was okay, because it was still the voice of her skinny protector from the Turkish Market then, asking her if she wanted to try some vanilla kave before they went to find her mother.
Two weeks later, returning from her grandmother's care, she'd found that Vicious had left for Recruit Training, headed for Titan. Her father had looked pained as he told her. Don't worry, he'll be okay, he'd said. Spike will help protect you from now on.
"Lornette."
She turned her head with a jolt. "Faye?"
Faye nodded as she looked out the window. "I like to come here, too. Sometimes." She leaned against the railing and lit a cigarette. "Gets me away from the others."
Lornette nodded, not really understanding. The last droplets of blood faded from her mind's eye, and something in her felt relief.
"So how did you like Jet's cooking?" Faye asked, puffing once. "It's not often he brings out the meat."
"Uh . it was okay ."
Lornette could tell the bounty hunter wanted to talk about something, to ask about something --- her mother had taught her about that kind of thing, too. But she's letting the cigarette get in the way. Well, that's fine with me!
"Faye?"
"Huh?"
"What's up with that kid, the one with the orange hair?"
Faye looked at her quizzically. "Oh, you mean Ed!"
"Ed?"
"Yeah, Ed. We found her on Earth."
"Oh ." Lornette looked puzzled.
"You don't want to know." Faye let the vapors fill her lungs and blew out in a lazy swirl. She turned to Lornette suddenly, arms crossed, and smiled. "So you --- you must know Spike pretty well, for him to go running off with you and your father like that."
Like anyone knows Spike. "Well ." Except Julia. Julia and Vicious.
"From when he was younger, right? He's from Mars?" Faye suddenly seemed to shut her mouth, as if she was shocked by how much she'd given away.
It was the words "from Mars" that set her off. Her father, walking through the smoke and blood of the blown-in door, Dragon coat covering his arm in a sling. "Lornette!"
He'd felt so strong, eternal, as she jumped into his embrace. "Dieh!"
Father ...
And now she was alone.
Lornette hugged herself and began to cry.
---------------------------------------------------------
Well shit, what did I do? Faye watched as Lornette sobbed quietly. "Uh, Lornette? Are you . okay?" If Spike saw this, he'd be mad. That the thought had even popped into her head made her even angrier with herself than she'd been before. Before Faye quite realized it, she'd already begun talking, the tone of disdain grating in her voice:
"Look, do you want me to go wake Spike? Because maybe you need to talk to him---"
Lornette looked up, stunned. How can she talk to me like ---
Her hand was a flash of brown that Faye barely saw. It caught Faye half- ducking and spun her to the Bebop's deck with a crack!
Faye shook her head and looked up. Lornette stood before her, hand still outraised, her pretty teenager's face streaked with tears. "I'm --- I'm sorry!" She turned and ran from the deck.
Faye rubbed her cheek. Oh man, I can be such a jerk ... her father just died, and I talk like that .
A part of her rebelled. At least she knew her father. At least she knew her mother, and friends, and Spike even!
But Lornette's tear-streaked face, lost in the past and the hurt, shook her. It reminded her too much of the face she sometimes saw in the mirror. Only sometimes.
Faye gathered herself and turned to go after Lornette.
"Hoy, where are you going?"
Faye knew that it wouldn't take much for Spike to see what had happened. The red, angry side of her face where Lornette had struck her, the just-lit cigarette straggling in the corner .
Spike stared at her, his eyes dark. "What happened?"
Faye looked away for a moment, and then met his eyes. "I have to apologize to Lornette."
Spike sighed. "You seem to be doing that a lot lately," he said briefly, and began to shuffle past her.
Faye felt her fists clench and her arms begin to quiver. How could . how dare---!
"Whoa!" Spike hit the floor as Faye kicked his crutch out from under him. "Wha--?"
"ENOUGH!" Faye shouted. "How can you be so SELFISH?!"
Spike looked after her as she stomped off in the opposite direction. "Selfish?" he asked no one as she disappeared around the corner. "Me?!"
------------------------------------------------------
Lornette watched Spike limp into the supply closet that Jet had turned into her bedroom. Supply closets on interplanetary fishing vessels were large, and it took Spike and his crutch almost a whole minute to cross from the door to where she was sitting on her inflatable cot. He's so hurt, but he's coming to talk to me .
"Hey," he said, sliding gingerly down to the floor, back to the wall. He closed his eyes and lit a cigarette, letting the smoke fill his lungs before blowing out in a huff of relief. "You okay?" He looked at her. "Don't worry about Faye. I told you already about how she's just a liar. No one around here takes her seriously."
Lornette looked away for a minute. She'd dried her tears already, but the ache of her father's memory still ground angrily in her stomach. The feeling of her hand hitting Faye's face only made it worse. "Spike . please tell Faye I'm sorry. I didn't want --- I didn't mean to hit her. Please?"
Spike raised an eyebrow. "It doesn't matter, I told---"
"No ." Lornette looked back at Spike. A small smile crinkled her face. "My father says ---" She paused for a moment, the smile weakening. "He said that the reason Mother and him had me instead of getting a pet was that they could at least tell me to clean up my own mess."
She's grown up, he thought. Julia always said that Lornette was a deep one .
Lornette looked away again. "I think of my father a lot."
"Yeah. Me too." Spike tapped her on the shoulder and saw a single tear in her right eye as she turned to him. Wordlessly, he offered her the cigarette in his hand.
Lornette stared at it for a minute, then took it. She brought it to her lips, smiled, and exhaled. "I remember when I saw you smoking before, when I was a kid, and you said it was bad for me."
"You're not a kid anymore," Spike said. He fished another Red from the crinkled pack in his left pocket and gestured. Lornette touched her cigarette tip to his, stifling a giggle, and Spike sat back with the cigarette dangling between his lips. "Your father knew it, too. He told me that he was proud of you, Lornette. You're his hope."
Lornette wiped away the tear from her eye. Spike is right. My father was right. I am grown up now. I am my father's hope.
She turned to face him. The words almost caught in her mouth, but when they came Lornette was shocked by the force of them. "Did you love my father?"
Spike's eyes widened. Then he looked away. "Lornette ." He knew what she was going to say.
"Then will you help me kill Vicious?"
Spike breathed in, forgetting the cigarette in his hand. She always did take after Ho Nam more than her mother. "Lornette ."
"Vicious murdered my father, Chan Ho Nam, the man who inducted him into the brotherhood of the Red Dragon. He murdered my grandmother, Dinah Mason. He murdered Walid Kuo, Oscar Martinez, Ti Lung, David Gorch, Musa Gorch, Soujiro Biao --- all of them his sworn brothers. He murdered Mao Yenrai, the leader of his Circle and the man who saved his life countless times. He betrayed the faith and honor of the Red Dragon and spit upon all tradition and order of the brotherhood ---" Lornette's voice was steady, iron-hard.
Her father had taught her well. Spike knew her words as the old familiar cadence, the measured, final tone of a Red Dragon leader pronouncing the crimes of a person marked for death. He'd listened to Ho Nam saying those words hundreds of times, always ending with asking the sworn men of his Circle for help in "acquitting justice and settling debts." And how many times I stepped forward, he thought. How many times .
"Lornette."
"--- betrayed the faith of his leader and of the Elders ---"
"Lornette!"
She looked at him, eyes hopeful. "Spike, I knew you would ---"
He raised his hand and waited for her to stop. The silence helped him clear his mind, to remember where he was.
"Do you remember your father's words? What did he say?"
"But ---"
"Are you your father's daughter? You don't remember his command?" Spike almost shook his head. He didn't know the old words were still in him; he hadn't even known them for that long before he'd left. I guess Mao was a better teacher than I knew. "Your father said, 'No revenge.' He ordered you to allow him to pass into the next world in peace, without more bloodshed."
She was staring at the floor, hands closed tightly. He prayed that she was listening.
"Lornette." Spike touched her gently on the shoulder. "Your father didn't want this for you."
He could feel her shake inside. She bowed her head. Spike reached out and gently put his hand on her shoulder, but she shrugged it off. "Please," she said.
He got up and limped out of the room. As he left, he heard her begin to cry.
It was the weeping of a girl again, a young girl who had lost her father. Spike knew that she had listened, that she would obey her father's wish, and he despised himself.
Vicious.
His eyes were death.
-----------------------------------------------------
If anyone knows how to put italics into this new FF format, please tell me!
This is my first chapter without any major action, and I'm frankly worried about it. I wrote it to give an insight into Lornette's, Faye's, and Spike's frame of mind at this moment, and to try and articulate their confused emotions. It sets up the action of future chapters. Anyway, I hope people like it, but if you don't, please go ahead and tell me so I can get better! Please review!
As always, you can email any responses to ckrisz@yahoo.com. I will always respond to whatever you have to say.
Thanks again!
P.S. Please allow me to pimp my other, original (well, not all that original) story on FF.net which can be found here: http://www.fanfiction.net/read.php?storyid=855970 Sorry, but it's also incomplete. Supposedly it is very CROUCHING TIGER- like. It's also a bit more bloody than this one. Check it out!
---------------------------------------------------
Hammerhead spun down the Venus gravity well, slicing through the swirling orange clouds in a glimmering flash. Lornette watched, and wondered if Spike was aboard.
Venus had a special place in her memories. Her mother had taken her on a vacation to the Turkish Market on Venus once, as her father did business in Topkapi, and she still remembered the thick black bitterness of kave coffee and the gentle eyes of the old vendor who'd sold it to her.
Vicious had come with them on that trip. She remembered seeing him for the first time, a painfully thin blond boy whom her mother said would be helping to protect them. He'd had the katana even then, tied tightly under his Dragon coat.
Her mother had laughed when the boy told them his name, and the boy had laughed too. "I'm not, it's just what the boys call me," he'd said. "I'm too skinny to be vicious." And throughout the trip he'd stuck by her side, holding her hand while her mother shopped, always smiling at her with careful, caring eyes. He'd made her feel safe even in a noisy, stranger- filled place like the Turkish Market.
He's grown up since then. Well, so have I.
Her father's last words stuck in her throat. How could he have given me an order like that? Because I came out a girl, and he always wished I was a boy? Did he think I was too weak?
The White Tigers had come for her when she was eleven. They didn't know Ho Nam's Circle like they would come to know it, and someone had thought she'd make a good hostage. The assistant principal who'd called her from the classroom had been trembling, barely able to hide his terror of the huge men behind him. It'd been her second class of the day, ten in the morning.
Her father had left two dozen White Tiger corpses in the streets by nightfall. The phone bleated endlessly in the basement apartment where they had tied her to bedposts; phone calls reporting cars bombed, buildings burned to the ground, men kidnapped, men killed. Lornette remembered feeling pity for the frightened Tigers who'd been watching over her. Her mother had showed her how to control her emotions, how to stare blankly and not give away a thing no matter how hard they looked. But these men couldn't even keep their voices from trembling as they argued over what to do with her.
There'd been one Tiger in particular; rat-faced, pale, and milky-eyed. He'd been staring at her since they'd brought her to the safe house. Her mother had taught her about this kind of man as well --- Lornette knew already that the rat-faced man would suggest raping her and exposing her body in the street to shame Chan Ho Nam before all the syndicates of Mars. She knew that he would want to go first.
The rat-faced man had been standing over her, his lips wet, while they screamed at each other. They'd still been arguing when the door blew down.
Spike Spiegel had been the first man through the smoke and tear gas, firing even as the door fell. The pistols in his hands roared as he dove to the right; wild return fire spattered the wall and ceiling. Before the gas got into her eyes completely, Lornette saw more men in Dragon coats lunging into the room. Vicious' katana flashed, bright steel slashing through the yellow fumes and a man's neck in one brilliant curve.
It was all screaming and dying men then; one young boy's voice begging for mercy; gunshots; the sound of metal going thunk! into meat and bone. She felt someone grab her, ripping her hands free from the bed painfully. She opened her mouth to shout for help, knowing without seeing that it was the rat-faced man who had her.
He'd almost managed to get his arm around her throat to use her as a shield when Vicious' throwing knife took him in the eye. Blood and mastic fluid trickled down onto her forehead, and his scream was like nothing Lornette had ever heard. She blinked furiously from the gas, crying out herself, and saw Spike fire once. The hypershock round blew the rat-faced man's head off.
Vicious had rushed to her, kicking away the corpse and wiping at her blood- spattered face with the sleeve of his Dragon coat. "Are you okay!?" he'd shouted through the din, and she was okay, because it was still the voice of her skinny protector from the Turkish Market then, asking her if she wanted to try some vanilla kave before they went to find her mother.
Two weeks later, returning from her grandmother's care, she'd found that Vicious had left for Recruit Training, headed for Titan. Her father had looked pained as he told her. Don't worry, he'll be okay, he'd said. Spike will help protect you from now on.
"Lornette."
She turned her head with a jolt. "Faye?"
Faye nodded as she looked out the window. "I like to come here, too. Sometimes." She leaned against the railing and lit a cigarette. "Gets me away from the others."
Lornette nodded, not really understanding. The last droplets of blood faded from her mind's eye, and something in her felt relief.
"So how did you like Jet's cooking?" Faye asked, puffing once. "It's not often he brings out the meat."
"Uh . it was okay ."
Lornette could tell the bounty hunter wanted to talk about something, to ask about something --- her mother had taught her about that kind of thing, too. But she's letting the cigarette get in the way. Well, that's fine with me!
"Faye?"
"Huh?"
"What's up with that kid, the one with the orange hair?"
Faye looked at her quizzically. "Oh, you mean Ed!"
"Ed?"
"Yeah, Ed. We found her on Earth."
"Oh ." Lornette looked puzzled.
"You don't want to know." Faye let the vapors fill her lungs and blew out in a lazy swirl. She turned to Lornette suddenly, arms crossed, and smiled. "So you --- you must know Spike pretty well, for him to go running off with you and your father like that."
Like anyone knows Spike. "Well ." Except Julia. Julia and Vicious.
"From when he was younger, right? He's from Mars?" Faye suddenly seemed to shut her mouth, as if she was shocked by how much she'd given away.
It was the words "from Mars" that set her off. Her father, walking through the smoke and blood of the blown-in door, Dragon coat covering his arm in a sling. "Lornette!"
He'd felt so strong, eternal, as she jumped into his embrace. "Dieh!"
Father ...
And now she was alone.
Lornette hugged herself and began to cry.
---------------------------------------------------------
Well shit, what did I do? Faye watched as Lornette sobbed quietly. "Uh, Lornette? Are you . okay?" If Spike saw this, he'd be mad. That the thought had even popped into her head made her even angrier with herself than she'd been before. Before Faye quite realized it, she'd already begun talking, the tone of disdain grating in her voice:
"Look, do you want me to go wake Spike? Because maybe you need to talk to him---"
Lornette looked up, stunned. How can she talk to me like ---
Her hand was a flash of brown that Faye barely saw. It caught Faye half- ducking and spun her to the Bebop's deck with a crack!
Faye shook her head and looked up. Lornette stood before her, hand still outraised, her pretty teenager's face streaked with tears. "I'm --- I'm sorry!" She turned and ran from the deck.
Faye rubbed her cheek. Oh man, I can be such a jerk ... her father just died, and I talk like that .
A part of her rebelled. At least she knew her father. At least she knew her mother, and friends, and Spike even!
But Lornette's tear-streaked face, lost in the past and the hurt, shook her. It reminded her too much of the face she sometimes saw in the mirror. Only sometimes.
Faye gathered herself and turned to go after Lornette.
"Hoy, where are you going?"
Faye knew that it wouldn't take much for Spike to see what had happened. The red, angry side of her face where Lornette had struck her, the just-lit cigarette straggling in the corner .
Spike stared at her, his eyes dark. "What happened?"
Faye looked away for a moment, and then met his eyes. "I have to apologize to Lornette."
Spike sighed. "You seem to be doing that a lot lately," he said briefly, and began to shuffle past her.
Faye felt her fists clench and her arms begin to quiver. How could . how dare---!
"Whoa!" Spike hit the floor as Faye kicked his crutch out from under him. "Wha--?"
"ENOUGH!" Faye shouted. "How can you be so SELFISH?!"
Spike looked after her as she stomped off in the opposite direction. "Selfish?" he asked no one as she disappeared around the corner. "Me?!"
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Lornette watched Spike limp into the supply closet that Jet had turned into her bedroom. Supply closets on interplanetary fishing vessels were large, and it took Spike and his crutch almost a whole minute to cross from the door to where she was sitting on her inflatable cot. He's so hurt, but he's coming to talk to me .
"Hey," he said, sliding gingerly down to the floor, back to the wall. He closed his eyes and lit a cigarette, letting the smoke fill his lungs before blowing out in a huff of relief. "You okay?" He looked at her. "Don't worry about Faye. I told you already about how she's just a liar. No one around here takes her seriously."
Lornette looked away for a minute. She'd dried her tears already, but the ache of her father's memory still ground angrily in her stomach. The feeling of her hand hitting Faye's face only made it worse. "Spike . please tell Faye I'm sorry. I didn't want --- I didn't mean to hit her. Please?"
Spike raised an eyebrow. "It doesn't matter, I told---"
"No ." Lornette looked back at Spike. A small smile crinkled her face. "My father says ---" She paused for a moment, the smile weakening. "He said that the reason Mother and him had me instead of getting a pet was that they could at least tell me to clean up my own mess."
She's grown up, he thought. Julia always said that Lornette was a deep one .
Lornette looked away again. "I think of my father a lot."
"Yeah. Me too." Spike tapped her on the shoulder and saw a single tear in her right eye as she turned to him. Wordlessly, he offered her the cigarette in his hand.
Lornette stared at it for a minute, then took it. She brought it to her lips, smiled, and exhaled. "I remember when I saw you smoking before, when I was a kid, and you said it was bad for me."
"You're not a kid anymore," Spike said. He fished another Red from the crinkled pack in his left pocket and gestured. Lornette touched her cigarette tip to his, stifling a giggle, and Spike sat back with the cigarette dangling between his lips. "Your father knew it, too. He told me that he was proud of you, Lornette. You're his hope."
Lornette wiped away the tear from her eye. Spike is right. My father was right. I am grown up now. I am my father's hope.
She turned to face him. The words almost caught in her mouth, but when they came Lornette was shocked by the force of them. "Did you love my father?"
Spike's eyes widened. Then he looked away. "Lornette ." He knew what she was going to say.
"Then will you help me kill Vicious?"
Spike breathed in, forgetting the cigarette in his hand. She always did take after Ho Nam more than her mother. "Lornette ."
"Vicious murdered my father, Chan Ho Nam, the man who inducted him into the brotherhood of the Red Dragon. He murdered my grandmother, Dinah Mason. He murdered Walid Kuo, Oscar Martinez, Ti Lung, David Gorch, Musa Gorch, Soujiro Biao --- all of them his sworn brothers. He murdered Mao Yenrai, the leader of his Circle and the man who saved his life countless times. He betrayed the faith and honor of the Red Dragon and spit upon all tradition and order of the brotherhood ---" Lornette's voice was steady, iron-hard.
Her father had taught her well. Spike knew her words as the old familiar cadence, the measured, final tone of a Red Dragon leader pronouncing the crimes of a person marked for death. He'd listened to Ho Nam saying those words hundreds of times, always ending with asking the sworn men of his Circle for help in "acquitting justice and settling debts." And how many times I stepped forward, he thought. How many times .
"Lornette."
"--- betrayed the faith of his leader and of the Elders ---"
"Lornette!"
She looked at him, eyes hopeful. "Spike, I knew you would ---"
He raised his hand and waited for her to stop. The silence helped him clear his mind, to remember where he was.
"Do you remember your father's words? What did he say?"
"But ---"
"Are you your father's daughter? You don't remember his command?" Spike almost shook his head. He didn't know the old words were still in him; he hadn't even known them for that long before he'd left. I guess Mao was a better teacher than I knew. "Your father said, 'No revenge.' He ordered you to allow him to pass into the next world in peace, without more bloodshed."
She was staring at the floor, hands closed tightly. He prayed that she was listening.
"Lornette." Spike touched her gently on the shoulder. "Your father didn't want this for you."
He could feel her shake inside. She bowed her head. Spike reached out and gently put his hand on her shoulder, but she shrugged it off. "Please," she said.
He got up and limped out of the room. As he left, he heard her begin to cry.
It was the weeping of a girl again, a young girl who had lost her father. Spike knew that she had listened, that she would obey her father's wish, and he despised himself.
Vicious.
His eyes were death.
-----------------------------------------------------
