DISCLAIMER: I don't own Cowboy Bebop; Sunrise, Inc. does. I do, however, own this original story.
Beyond Beautiful
By The Lady Razorsharp
Part 8: Reunion
What on earth is going on in my heart
Has it turned as cold as stone
Seems these days I don't feel anything
Less it cuts me right down to the bone
My oh my you know it just don't stop
It's in my mind I wanna tear it up
I've tried to fight it tried to turn it off
But it's not enough
It takes a lotta love
It takes a lotta love my friend
To keep your heart from freezing
To push on till the end
--David Gray
Shin opened the door to the shrine room, his footsteps muffled by the heavy maroon carpet. On the dais in front of him lay a simple wooden casket, draped with a pall embroidered with the Red Dragon crest. Small ruby and amber votives flickered on the dais just beyond the circle of cloth. Elaborate floral arrangements flanked the coffin, and a pyramid of perfect oranges nestled on an antique lacquerware platter beside Lin's silver-framed photograph. Incense wafted from smoldering sticks left by those who had previously paid their respects to Lin, and the sweet, spicy smoke perfumed the air to a heaviness that pressed against Shin's chest.
He remembered how he and his brother had entered this room and knelt together at Spike's coffin, watching the flames make Spike's garnet eyes flicker with the imitation of life. It had been almost enough to make them believe the frame was only a window, and Spike was alive somewhere, just out of reach.
Julia had pressed an object into Shin's hand that day, and it was only later when he went to retrieve his house key that he realized what Julia had given him. Now the oil lighter lay heavy in his hand, the light gleaming golden from its worn surface. He thumbed it to life, and it gave out a pale orange flame that did nothing to dispel the darkness.
Picking out two sticks of his own to light, Shin knelt in front of his brother's solemn-faced portrait. After lighting the incense, he blew the sticks out with a small puff of air, and the smoke lay its burden against Shin's chest again.
The prayers for the repose of his brother's soul came unbidden and emotionless into his mind. Between his joined palms, the incense twirled its languid twin plumes into the air, the ghostly columns rippling with some unseen breath one moment and then flowing straight up the next.
On his way back from Callisto, Vicious had radioed ahead for Shin to meet him at the spaceport. As Vicious emerged from the Red Dragon cruiser, Shin had fallen in beside him. Lin is dead, Vicious had said, without preamble. There had been no other explanation, and there was no need for one. Lin had devoted himself to Spike and Vicious, choosing to serve the latter with loyalty when he would have served the former with love.
Forgive me, big brother, Shin's thoughts echoed in the cavern of his empty heart for his minutes-older twin. I couldn't have done what you did. Not for Vicious.
Shin stuck the ends of the incense into a black-glazed earthenware bowl filled with red Martian sand, where the sticks continued to curl their way into oblivion. Sitting back on his heels, he contemplated his brother's face; the short-cropped, dark chestnut hair, the wide emerald eyes, the finely drawn mouth, the thin, elegant eyebrows, the long, sharp nose. It was a mirror image that would only now look back at Shin through the mirror.
Rage welled in tandem with the tears, and Shin's hand flashed out toward the bowl. The broken incense sticks scattered among the ruby drifts of sand, which stained the white border of the pall with a fine red powder. The bowl smacked against the glass of the photo, and a long, jagged crack split Lin's face in two. Rising to his feet, Shin swept the pile of oranges into disarray with the toe of his boot, and he drove his heel into the fragile wood of the tray. He ripped the lilies from their places amongst the camellias and peonies, bruising the delicate petals as he trod them underfoot. Flinging aside the heavy pall, Shin tore the lid from the coffin to find Lin, still and pale, lying amidst folds of white satin.
Lin's eyes opened slowly. The overturned votives had begun to lick at the linen pall, and Lin's deep evergreen irises glimmered in the light.
A single modulated syllable chimed against Shin's brain: No.
"Why?" Shin's tears pattered against his brother's waxy cheek. "I need you, Lin."
I'm sorry.
"Damnit, Lin! Why did it have to be for him?" Shin tipped his head forward to rest his brow against Lin's cool forehead, a distraught Narcissus trapped by his own dead reflection.
Jacob have I loved, Esau have I hated.
"Please!" Shin sobbed, taking his brother's face between his hands. "Please, Lin!"
Always love you, little brother.
Shin whirled to find a wall of fire bearing down on them. Something at his back gave a hard shove, and he threw his arms up in front of his face as he fell headlong through the flames.
His eyes snapped open. He was still kneeling in his place before the pall-draped coffin, the bowl undisturbed, the incense a black smudge of soot on the red sand. Before him, Lin's Kodachrome eyes danced in the light of the guttering votives. The oranges gleamed in their ordered pile on the tray. As Shin watched, a stargazer lily dropped a single petal on the maroon carpet.
Shin rose to his feet and bowed deeply to his brother's coffin, then turned and left the room.
Vicious, with the black-winged cormorant perched on his shoulder, was waiting for Shin in the harsh fluorescent glare of the hallway. Vicious turned to walk toward the elevator, and Shin fell in step, their boots clicking against the tiles.
"It's all coming apart," Vicious said, his voice an icy whisper.
"They will try to kill you," Shin said in Lin's flat, cold voice. "They wish make an example of you."
"Yes," Vicious agreed. "I am sure they do."
He stopped, and Shin followed suit. Vicious turned and reached out his right hand, brushing his thumb over Shin's cheek. "I remember you then. You were so young," Vicious murmured, as Shin stood, unblinking. "You loved him, didn't you?"
Shin swallowed as quietly as he could. "I loved my brother, yes."
Vicious' top teeth glinted briefly, his chuckle little more than a heavy exhale. Dropping his hand, he produced a slip of paper from somewhere in his coat and tucked it into Shin's breast pocket. "I have a job for you. Go to the address written on this note." He turned to resume his progress down the hall.
Shin's brow furrowed the barest millimeter. "What should I do when I get there?"
With his profile toward Shin, only Vicious' thin smile was visible beneath the tangle of white hair. "You are to meet the past."
~*****~
You are to meet the past.
If he hadn't been so numb, he thought, he would have wondered at the single-mindedness with which he did Vicious' bidding. It was simply the training that Vicious and Spike had beaten into them—sometimes literally—that moved Shin along the rainy streets of Alva City. Even through his red-hot rage against Vicious, there remained the compulsion to see the job through, the task completed. One foot in front of the other, inhale, exhale.
At the end of the next block, he ducked into a convenience store. A brown-eyed girl with boy-short brown hair smiled prettily at him from behind the bulletproof glass.
"Welcome! Can I help you?"
He shoved the slip of paper at her through the service window, remembering at the last moment to soften the bark into a request. "Can you tell me where this address is from here?"
She studied the paper, pursing her rosy lips in thought. "It's not far. You just go up the street and make a left. It's called the Tower Hotel—it'll be on the right hand side of the street."
Though he was sure his face would crack with the effort, Shin managed one of his gangster-boy smiles. "Thank you very much." He backed away from the counter and kissed his gloved fingertips in her direction. The old lady rearranging the cigarette display frowned, but the girl blushed and gave him a little wave. He turned with a flourish that made his coat flare and flashed the girl one last smile before he went back out into the rain.
Shin raised his hand and rapped twice on the door the directions had led him to. The peephole flickered briefly, and the door swung open to reveal a face that had only lived in Shin's dreams for the last three years.
Julia was as beautiful as ever, with her golden hair and her summer-sky blue eyes, but her face was pale. She regarded Shin silently for a moment. "What do you want?" she asked.
"I need to talk to you."
She nodded gravely. "Is anyone waiting for you downstairs?"
"No. I'm here alone."
She stepped aside, and he made a short bow of thanks as he entered the apartment. After a glance around, Julia shut the door and locked the deadbolt. "Stay here," she instructed, and disappeared into the other room. Shin did as he was told, and in a moment Julia reappeared with a snowy white towel in her hands. She handed him the towel.
Shin mopped his face and rubbed his sodden hair. "I'm sorry about the rug," Shin began, but Julia waved his words away.
"Here, let me have your coat." Shin divested himself of the heavy wet wool, revealing a well-worn gun holster strapped around his broad shoulders. As Julia bent to hang the coat on the back of a chair close to the radiator, Shin noticed that Julia's gun was stuck down the back of her bleach-blue jeans.
"Have a seat," she offered. She went into the pantry and poured two fingers' worth of brandy into a tumbler. Tossing it back in one shot, Julia wiped her eyes on her dark blue sweater-clad sleeve and refilled the glass, then took the glass back to the living room.
Shin was perched on the edge of the sofa, his eyes fixed unseeing on the magazines scattered on the coffee table. When he heard Julia come in, he jumped to his feet.
"This will warm you up," Julia said as she proffered the tumbler. Shin accepted with a nod of thanks and resumed his seat.
Julia waited until Shin had tipped the last of the brandy down his throat. "It's been a long time, Shin," she murmured. "How did he find me?"
Shin put the glass on the table. "Vicious is Vicious. What he wants to know, he knows."
"I heard he was killed in the war on Titan."
Shin shrugged. "As Vicious-sama says, the rumors of his death were greatly exaggerated."
Spike would have grinned at that idea, and Julia allowed herself a thin smile in memory of that grin. "Apparently." She studied the toes of her boots. "And how is Mao-taijin?"
Shin's face darkened. "Mao-taijin is dead, Julia."
After a moment, Julia nodded. "I heard about that, too. I just wanted to make sure it was true."
"You're so sure I'd tell you the truth?" Shin countered.
Julia raised her head. "Vicious used to say that you two would never be able to lie and get away with it," she sighed. "He said it was your angelic faces."
Tears welled in Shin's eyes and fell in silent, diamond-bright drops. "Lin is dead," he murmured, Vicious' echo ringing in Shin's ears.
"What—"
"He died protecting Vicious-sama." Julia sat stunned into silence as Shin continued. "It was on Jupiter."
Gren. The handsome saxophone player's face flitted through Julia's mind, the memory of his bluer-than-blue gaze bringing bittersweet stirrings in her heart. Did you get to ask Vicious why he betrayed you? I wish I'd been there.
As Shin dissolved into sobs, Julia put her arms around him as she had when the twins were younger. She stroked his hair, finally understanding why Vicious had sent the boy.
She had been running for over three years, but she knew that it was pointless to run anymore. Vicious had found her; there was nowhere else to run.
Keep dreaming, Julia. It's never going to happen.
It also meant that somewhere, Spike was alive, and the game was drawing to a close.
Either you kill him, or you both die. Those are your only options.
"Time to go home," she whispered.