Whoops, keep on forgetting this, lol: I do not own Cowboy Bebop, but I do have many images of Spike, Faye, Jet, Ed, Ein, Julia, Vicious …etc. I do, however, own the strange thoughts that formed this story and many others. Teaser for Session 28 at the end. Oh, and I apologize again for the shortness, but don't worry because longer ones are coming!
Session XXVII: Put The Past Away
It felt strange to be standing there, alive and well …er, alive and healing, while he was dead. The vicious cycle was over. Hah, funny. Spike took a deep drag from his cigarette and shoved his hands in his pockets, wincing inwardly at the stabs of pain from various regions of his body. Beneath his clothes, he was largely a mummy, as Faye had pointed out mirthfully many a time before, and Jet hadn't wanted him to be off gallivanting around so soon after walking away from death's claws again. Spike Spiegel, however, had never been one to lie around doing nothing, no matter how much pain he received for occupying his boredom with wild escapades. This time, he was in considerably more pain than he had been after facing down Vicious in the cathedral and after the Tongpu incident, both of which were safely behind him like the rest of his past that he was preparing to bury along with the man once friend lying cold in the casket.
"Mao Yenrai …my mentor, my father …of sorts, dead." His grave was in the same section of the graveyard as the graves of the Van. "The Van, no longer in anyone's hair. Annie …Anastasia, dead as well because of me. Lin, dead. Shin, dead trying to help me get to Vicious to end all the killing." Annie was buried near Julia, Shin and Lin buried with the rest of the Red Dragon Syndicate casualties. "Julia …dead." On his warpath, Spike had nearly wiped out the entire Red Dragon Syndicate, and if one looked at it in a dark light, it was as though he was completing what Vicious had started with his revolt against the Van. Faye and Jet had killed most of the other members when they had arrived to scrape his corpse up off the stairs, but he'd been stuck alive once more. There were still some Red Dragon members alive, mostly men and women who hadn't been at the syndicate building, but Spike knew almost none of them past their names, having met a few before and never having seen them after. Every single link to his syndicate past was gone and dead, and he was finally free.
"At what cost?" He demanded of the cloudy sky. "All I wanted to do was escape with Julia …I've died three times trying to get away, and this third time I've finally broken the bonds, but I've dragged a lot of people down with me." He shook his head remorsefully. It shouldn't have had to be that way. It shouldn't have, but it was, because it couldn't have gone any other way. Spike and Vicious had been well-respected members of the syndicate, both standing in line to replace the Van later on, once they'd grown up more and learned the trade, and once the Van had died, but the syndicate life didn't sit well with Spike Spiegel. It wasn't just Julia, it wasn't that he'd fallen in love with his best friend's woman, it wasn't that he wanted to take her away to give her a better, safer life. Vicious had been partially right about the syndicate, for a change did need to come about, but not just from killing the Van and taking over. Mao Yenrai had been on the right track, he had been like Spike, searching for a way to cleanse the bloodshed and to put a damper on the death toll that came of the undeclared wars the Red Dragons were raging with rival syndicates, most particularly the White Tigers. It was time for a revolution, but that revolution had to be eased in, it had to be refined and shaped carefully, not thrust upon the Van, or the wise, long-surviving members of the syndicate and especially not on the upstart youths who still didn't really grasp what the syndicate was all about.
Mao Yenrai was dead though, and so too was Vicious, and the Red Dragons were almost extinct. This life was over and Spike was ready to bide his connections to it goodbye. His crimson star had burned out and he had bled away the blood he shared with Vicious. The roses for Julia were long since wilted and dead, the petals of their love falling away slowly over time until each was withered on the ground, blown to the scattered reaches of Mars by the mourning wind. He had shed his tears for those dead and buried and he was at last ready to put his past away.
Faye didn't realize how nice she had it, having her past lost in the Gateway incident, having no memories to seep into her dreams, transfiguring them into nightmares that woke her in a cold sweat. But wait, that wasn't all true, Faye had told him before he left to see if he was truly alive that she remembered her past. Spike wondered absently if her memories would stay now, or whether they would slip away from her as his past had slipped away from him. Ah well, no matter if she did have memories, at least they weren't haunted like his, visions of what he had done, visions of the betrayals and the murders, and visions of a wicked angel lusted after by two sinful mortals, visions of that demonic taste of paradise sought after by two blood-thirsty beasts. That was all over though, it would all be buried with this last corpse …this last piece of his past to lay to eternal rest. Thunder rolled ominously overhead and Spike wondered if it would rain, if the clouds would cover up the sky of his life again so soon after he had reached the blue of freedom.
Silver-white hair, an unusual color for one only twenty-seven, but then again, so was viridian and so was violet-navy …not so unusual in this age, and probably not all that unusual in the past either, unusual only in that the shades were natural. "You lived up to your name, Vicious." Spike spoke at last, gazing down into the coffin where Vicious was laid out, pale blue eyes hidden behind closed lids, his mortal wounds – Spike's handiwork – hidden by the superb make-up job of the morgue people. "I suppose …I should have been careful of what I asked for. After all," He chuckled softly, bitterly, "I was the one who told you that you should. We were always brothers, Vicious, by the blood of the beast, if not by our parentage …but my blood isn't that of the beast anymore, and you're no longer in this life. We are still brothers though, despite what happened, despite the rifts that separated us in the end …" He closed his eyes momentarily and sighed heavily. "Sleep well, brother mine. I guess we've both woken from our dreams …and your slumber can finally be peaceful."
He wouldn't cry, he was through crying for what he'd lost, and he wouldn't keep his brother from his rest any longer, so Spike stepped back and gave a nod to the graveyard workers. For a long time he stood there, at the edge of Vicious's grave even after the dirt was thrown over the coffin, even after the sky broke quietly and unleashed a downpour that tasted almost salty to Spike as a few raindrops landed on his lip. "Someone …cry for me with parched eyes …" He whispered. "I will cry no more."
* * *
The Bebop was disturbingly and fittingly silent as Spike walked down the hall towards the recreation/den room, hands in his pockets and a cigarette hanging from his mouth, leaving a trail of water and mud through the halls. He knew he should change out of his soaked clothes if he didn't want to catch a cold, but he didn't feel up to it and so he merely sprawled across the couch, the cold rain and pain from his wounds numbing him to his wayward thoughts as he reclined in his usual spot, trying to keep from sitting in a position that made his wounds flare up in pain. He closed his eyes and smoked his cigarette slowly, trying to keep time from catching up to him, trying to just hold on to a moment so he could sort through the confusion of his thoughts and emotions. It was difficult, he realized at last, to willingly let a life die away and to settle fully into another, but he'd been trying for three years and at last the final walls had broken down and he was free to abandon his old life, free to let it fade away like his crimson star, his bloody star.
"What do you do," A soft voice began, "when you find out that the key to what you cannot remember, doesn't unlock the door to your memories? What do you do, when what you once had is lost beyond your reach?"
Spike opened his eyes to see Faye sitting on the other couch, her face downcast as if she was afraid of looking him in the eye, afraid of what his response might be. "Cope." He said at last. "Things have a tendency to return when you least want them to …you said your memories came back, all of them, but they've been put on a shelf out of your reach …" He paused and watched as she frowned, trying to understand. "You were getting your memories back, slowly but surely before I left …I think you've just got to grow up …the shelf will be in your reach sooner or later, Faye. Until then, just smoke a cigarette and wait for it."
"Like that saying …if you love something let it go, and if it comes back to you you'll know it's yours and if it doesn't, then it never was?" She asked gingerly as he offered her one of his cigarettes.
"Yeah, I guess, sort of like that. Just let it go for now, Faye, all things come in time."
"Thanks," She replied after a minute, lighting the cigarette and standing to leave. "For the smoke …and for listening."
He nodded and leaned back again, watching the smoke in long, slender spirals, staring up at the ceiling as if it held the answers he and Faye were searching for. "You know, Jet, I don't know how you did it, but I envy you for it."
"For what?" Came the low-voiced response from the senior member of the crew, oldest at thirty-six.
"Living with your past. Mine is chaotic, Faye's is little more than a haze, and we're both stuck scrambling for clues for how to keep going. How'd you get everything to make sense anyway?"
Jet chuckled. "I didn't. I just live the life I've got the best I can …and so do the pair of you and what a troublesome pair you two are. Life has never made sense, Spike, I thought you knew that. My life is like a song, yours is like liquid, Faye's is a game of cards …just let it flow."
Spike laughed then as well. "I feel a fool, my old friend."
"Hey, who're you calling old?" Jet demanded with a smile.
"In trying to sever the links to my past, I lost touch with my present life, the one with a future …I turned myself around and forgot how to just live." He sat there a moment longer and stood up at last, putting out his cigarette in the ashtray by the couch he had been sitting on. "I think we all need to cut a break." He announced then. "Faye, c'mon out here! Let's the three of us go out for a night on the town, let's cut loose without having to worry about catching a bounty for supper or anything. And then, once we're sufficiently plastered, we come back here to work off our hangovers in the morning …we come back home."
Faye laughed as she entered the room. "I second the notion!"
Jet too was in good cheer as he nodded agreement. "It'll be fun. It'll be rough in the morning, but we just gotta live for the moment."
Spike and Jet stepped up to the door and both turned, each offering an arm to Faye who stepped up between them and took both arms. "Besides that, I've always found that partying and getting drunk is the best medicine for what ails you, be it physical pain or emotional woes. Tonight," Spike added jovially, "tonight we drink to life."
"To life!"
Saddle up for a prairie oyster breakfast, cowboys!
On the next session of Cowboy Bebop … Session XXVIII: Campfire Tales – Faye and Spike take off in their respective ships to get some bounty information from the Laughing Bull and wind up stuck on the planet when their ships are wrecked. Meanwhile, Jet is stranded on Tijuana when Edward uses her 'Bebop Remote' to bring the ship to earth so she can go back home. You the readers get to choose who Jet must spend time with in this bizarre and humorous session. Choices: VT and Zeros; Antonio, Carlos, and Jobin – the senile old men who may or may not have worked on the gates – or Andy Von De Oniyate.