Because I love this scene. This entire bit is a spoiler for Jupiter Jazz II (Session 13). If you've watched it, you'll probably complain that this is a much toned-down version of events. I like toned-down. Life is toned-down.


Boy Alone :: Epilogue

Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

--Dylan Thomas

A rooftop. Three ships. A circle in the centre, perhaps a landing-pad for an unwieldy 'chopper. Smoke and the smell, faint, of nitrates.

Lin thinks, well, at least the explosives were put together flawlessly.

The woman/man in grey points her/his gun at Vicious-sama, who stares at her/him, his cold eyes seeing another face from another time, lit by a different sun... How many ghosts do you collect in your lifetime? Lin moves to a sitting position, wincing as his body asserts the damage done to it. Sweat over his left eyebrow, trickling down, matting his eyelashes, blinding him in one eye; when he wipes it away it is sticky, thick, the fresh red of a new wound.

And always the gun is there, pointed at Vicious-sama.

"There is nothing there to believe," Vicious-sama says, "nor is there a need to believe..."

There is a need, Lin thinks; there is always a need. In that moment he understands that Vicious is no longer entirely of the Dragon; that the Vans' suspicions were correct. Even Vicious had said:

"If you want to survive, you must betray me at times."

But for so long the concept of Vicious and the Red Dragon has been one and the same: protect one, thus protecting the other. Lin stands, and, in his confusion, is certain of two things that he lists down as he moves, almost without realising the actions of his own body, towards Vicious and the woman/man in grey, speaking of a time and place he never knew, their voices and eyes gone to ice and ash, standing with the space of a bullet's-flight between them:

1. His last instructions from the Dragon were to protect Vicious.
2. There is a reason for everything.

And if is for him to step in front of Vicious as the gun goes off, to feel the explosion all the way through arm and shoulder and ribs, to feel the crack in that ankle which he falls awkwardly on, to have the dust smarting in his eyes and the dying of the light in both vision and awareness - if this is part of everything, then there is a reason for it.

And it is never his place to know the reason.


Footnotes:
1. I couldn't find a single good reason why Lin would want to step in front of a bullet instead of cleanly shooting Gren's gun hand right after the explosion and saving them ALL a lot of trouble. Maybe his brains got addled from that knock he got after the bomb blew.
2. In JJI (Session 12), the Van guy who instructed Lin to 'go with Vicious' is apparently acting independently of his other two mates (one of them turns to him and says his name in a rather surprised and indignant tone). I'm going to assume that guy knows Vicious is going bad, and expected something to happen to Lin, and maybe provided for it as well. (Yeah, I want a sequel with Lin in it, really bad).
3. And for the last effing time, people don't die within two seconds of a single pistol wound in the left arm / rib. As Mr. White said to Mr. Orange, "Next to the kneecap, the gut is the most painful area a guy can get shot in, but it takes ages to die from it." In the scene, you can see Lin sort of diving sideways so that the only place the bullet could go was in his ribs or lower - Gren was aiming at Vicious's feet prior to that. I don't know if he could have dragged himself to a hospital or something after that, and if he survived the Dragons don't know it (Shin and Vicious, in the last session, refer briefly to him in the past tense), I'm just very sure that he didn't die before the airfight. And you know, extra time, extra hope.
4. Hell, the footnotes are longer than the story.

And finally thanks for reading. 'Night all.