A/N~ Hello! I'm sorry that it's been so long since I updated...But I've been so stressed lately and have had barely anytime to breathe. So forgive me, please? Hopefully someone out there is still interested in this story...*sigh*
Disclaimer: Not own, not own. The song Where do I hide belongs to Nickleback
and because I can't sing and am a girl, I doubt I'm one of them, so I obviously
don't own the song. Oh. And one more thing (which I feel I've said a billion times) I don't own Cowboy Bebop.
~Dove~
Chapter Six: Waltz for Memory
///...Okay, 3, 2, 1, Let's Jam!...///
They told him not to go, well, that wasn't the right wording. They asked him desperately not to consider going, but he just smirked at them and went. There was no rule that the leader couldn't get his hands dirty and yet they seemed almost afraid of him going out on the field.
"It's because you always almost die!" Reyn screamed at him, before remembering and hesitantly adding the 'sir'.
Chaos had grinned, grabbed his jacket off the back of the chair, and made his way to his new ship, the Nightbringer.
And so here he was...
///...Got a criminal record
Can't cross state lines
First on the bad list
And you're last on mine...///
A dozen members of the Tiger Syndicate were chasing him down Embon street on Mars. He'd had five elite guards with him, and two of them hadalready fallen. Chaos had known their names, he knew every single one of his peoples names, something that Reyn had never noticed.
Holding a gun in each hand, he snarled in the face of Tiger as they used a car as a ramp and jumped over him. Punching the guy in the face, he spun in a circle, and rammed his foot into the nearest enemy, taking the time to notice how Eden, May, and Charlie were doing...
Seemed Charlie had a little slice on his arm, but he'd live.
Grinning demonically, Chaos flung himself at another Tiger, realizing that things had progressed to a sort of stand off, that there would be no more running.
He thought it was pretty funny.
///..Lookin' for a scapegoat
Long past due
Walking down the aisle
Staring straight at you...///
After trading blows with the younger Tiger member, Chaos grew rather bored of the sloppy technique the young man was using, and pulled out a gun, blowing the look off the guys face.
And how many more are left?
There was still fun to be had...
He lurched forward suddenly, stumbling as if he'd been shot, but there was no wound. Eden hurried worriedly to his side, to find him staring at the ground as if it were a mirror reflecting his true self.
And he felt as if...someone was missing...Someone who'd stand at his back as the guns were fired...Someone...
The price has been paid. You cannot remember.
The feeling was gone, smirking at Eden he assured her he was fine, drew a bomb out of his jacket, pulled the pin, and threw it over his shoulder where he knew five or so of the Tigers were hiding.
"So," he demanded, "how much farther til we reach there headquarters?"
Eden looked at him in shock, "You mean," she gasped out, blood spurting from between her teeth, "we're still going to try?"
"...What happened to your...?" He inquired lazily as he straightened his jacket and fluffed his hair, looking this way and that as if to figure out if any of the Tiger agents were still alive and kicking.
"I bit my tongue when the Nightbringer crashed the...third time..."
Chaos shot her a disapproving look, "Third time?"
She shrugged, "The first one was when we rammed into the Tiger's small transport ship, the second, when we rammed it and ourselves into the hospital, and the third, when you decided it'd be so much fun if we landed on top of that syndicate man, sir."
"That last one," he told her as he reloaded his gun, "wasn't a crash."
"If you say so, sir." She looked as though she wanted to laugh.
"Sir?" Charlie inquired, "Are you alright?" He'd limped over to them, looking as though he'd pass out at any time now, his face drawn and white.
"I'm find, but Charlie, my man, you don't seem so good."
"I think, you're right, sir..."
"Aren't I always?" Chaos grumbled and turned to Eden, "Take him back to the Nightbringer and go back to headquarters."
A flash of horror and comprehension filled her eyes as she answered, "Yes, sir. But what about you and May?"
This is what I live for. "We're going in."
"Sir, if I may speak my mind..."
"Eden, you're going to anyway, so just get it over with." Chaos responded with a roll of his eyes.
"It's impossible, sir." What surprised him was that she seemedafraid, and she shouldn't. She had no chance of being killed, she was supposed to go back to HQ, not go into the thick of it with him...
"The impossible is what I do."
///...I still hear him screaming "where do I hide?"
And all he asks and I say "hurry inside"...///
He turned to May, the young woman wearing black like him, and carrying a shot-gun, a thin cut on her cheek her only visible wound.
He didn't ask if she was ready, just nodded once and strode over to the nearest car.
"Need help, sir?"
He chuckled and dangled a set of keys in her face as she sat down in the passenger sit. "Fool left 'em in the plug."
A rumble and the bright red, mustang looking car, fired up.
///...He said, she said
No she didn't
Be back before morning
And you know she won't...///
*
"Faye? That you?" His voice broke through her reverie, reminding her why she wanted a drink, reminding her why she'd avoided returning to the Bebop till the next day.
Ed had thought of it as a grand adventure, making Faye-Faye drag her to ice-cream shop after ice-cream shop before stopping at a big hotel with shining lights.
Faye had been too out of it to tell her that they didn't have any money. But it seemed Jet did, or had, and so they'd put everything under his name.
She figured he probably already knew and that this wold be a speech about all the blah-blah money crap.
Faye sat up on the couch, where she'd just fallen, and replied, "Yeah, Jet. It's me."
"Where's Ed?" A light flickered on in the kitchen and he stuck his head out inquiringly.
"Bedroom. She's dead tired."
"It's six o'clock in the morning."
"...Yeah, well we were up til midnight playing cards," Faye responded with a yawn. Using
William's deck, that Faye hadn't known Ed had snatched. She hadn't even known Ed had been in that room.
"So what did you find?"
What exactly should she tell him? That she'd found a ton of jewelry but lost it in an
ice cream shop? That the only things she'd kept were an old birthday card and a wedding ring?
That she had this underlying suspicion about the whole thing that she didn't want to voice?
"I'm not sure yet. I need Ed to look some things up."
Silence and then. "Oh."
She got to her feet, figuring now was a good time to beat a retreat to her room with a nice soft bed that she would sink into and try to forget...
"Faye?"
"Uh, yeah?"
"CATCH A DAMN BOUNTY IF YOU DON'T WANT TO BE KICKED OFF THE SHIP!" The sound of banging pots followed this announcement and Faye hoped he'd dropped them on his foot.
*
"Faye-Faye?"
A voice through the endless black and the sounds of a cheer. Someone was calling her?
"Wakey-Wakey?"
No. Not yet...Sleep...
"Is something wrong with her Ein-woof?"
"Woof-woof!"
"Ohhhhhhh!"
The sound of feet pattering against metal. Sleep again. No annoying voices.
"AHHHHHH!" Faye screamed as she was jolted awake by an onslaught of freezing water. "Why you little!"
"Eikkkkkkk! Run Einnnnn!"
After a five minute chase around the Bebop, which made Jet grumble and light a cigarette
before he disappeared into his bonsai room, Faye successfully caught Edward and tied her to a chair.
"Now, you're going to find everything you can about Kathrine and David Spiegel."
"Ohhhhhhhhhhh."
Faye's eye twitched. "What is it?"
"But Ed already found everything that she could."
"Then why didn't you tell me that?!"
"Ed had to wakey-wakey Faye-Faye firsty!"
She could already feel a migraine coming on, "Alright, tell me what you know."
"Wellllllllllll," Ed said, and slithered out of the rops that bound her, grabbed her computer, pushed a couple of buttons, and shoved the thing in Faye's face.
"Kathrine and David Spiegel. Her last name was Turimso and she had inherited a great amount of money from her late father. She never knew her mother. Blah, blah, blah. David was a...Huh?"
"Ohhhh, that's hacker-lingo-code for assassin!"
"But she didn't, ah, know that, did she Ed?"
"Ahh, nope-nope."
"So she married an assassin without knowing, and they had a kid. But eight or so years later, Kathrine found out that her husband was a killer, blah, blah, blah. The kid was six when she took him to live with her alone in a white house that later became known as The Haunted House of White. Creative name..." Faye stared at the computer screen as if hypnotized by the floating words that stare back at her.
"And then," Ed added, "Mr. David-person was told to kill her."
"And did he?" Something in her heart wrenched as if she was afraid of the answer.
///...Well I remember that summer
Like yesterday
And I remember his mother
As he was dragged away...///
"No-no, read-read." Ed reprimanded Faye as if she were a teacher, and Faye a student just learning to read.
"David gave her a drug that would erase some of her memories, hoping she would forget
what he was," Raising an eyebrow, Faye sent a look at Ed and added in an undertone, "Stupid, men," before continuing. "He then tried to kill William, because the kid, although only seven or so, attacked him when he gave Kathrine the drug. Smart kid."
"His name was William Spiegel."
"But David Spiegel was just an alias, his real name was Bedlam Onslaught. And he tried to kill his own kid, but William survived the attack and was dragged away by child protection." Faye stopped reading and stared at the picture of Bedlam that Ed has just brought up with a click of a button. He did like an awful lot like...
"Story is not ended-ended!" Edward reminded her.
Faye sighed, and began reading out loud again, "Kathrine, having lost most of her sanity, thought William was dead, even after people telling her repeatedly he was not." Faye swallowed, her mouth feeling dry as she read the next sentence, "She flung herself off a cliff."
Ed nodded knowingly before throwing her hands up into the air, and reaching over Faye's head, hit another button that brought up a small report with David Spiegel's name written on the top.
Faye shot Edward an exasperated look before mumbling, "David died a couple weeks later, murdered in his sleep, but it doesn't say who did it..."
Edward just stared back at her, "Didn't say, but Faye-Faye, you know?"
An empty pit of blackness in her heart, the same feeling she'd felt while watching the beta video of herself, jumping up and down,"Will..."
///...I still hear him screaming "where do I hide?"
And all he asks and I say "hurry inside"
A whole lot of memories...yours and not mine
And all he asks and I say "hurry inside"...///
"Does it say what happened to William?" Faye inquired as Ed began to type at her computer with her toes.
"Umm...He ran away from Child Services, and that's all the computer has to say about that!"
"But...what about the name Spike Spiegel?"
"Faye-Faye?"
///...Got a criminal record
I can't cross state lines
First on the bad list
And you're last on mine
Lookin' for a scapegoat
Long past due
Walking down the aisle
Staring straight at you...///
Memories. Well you hold them for him, fairy? The price is paid and the gift
can't be taken back. This is how it will always be. The dragon will soar and fire
will spread, tears falling steadily from eyes that will not cry. An endless source
of blood that shall be spilt, but never become dry.
///...I still hear him screaming "where do I hide?"
And all he asks and I say "hurry inside"
A whole lot of memories...yours and not mine
And all he asks and I say "hurry inside, where do I hide?"...///
* A child stumbles forward, gun in his fist as he stares at the sidewalk beneath him. Every step he takes leaves a footprint of blood trailing behind him. A door cracks open ahead, a young man stepping out of a shop, dressed in black and frowning. He spots the child.
"Where do I hide?"
He starts at the question, sees the pain in the child's face, and stares into the eyes of the blood covered angel. Mao sees potential. He sees the child he can never have.
"Hurry inside."
He opens the door fully, allowing the child to stumble in, before firmly shutting it and the horrors of the world away.*
///...The truth, dragon, is wrapped in lies...///
A/N~ I hope this chapter wasn't too confusing...I tried to make it as understandable as I could, but I don't know...Looks at page count. Hey! Guess what? This is my longest chapter yet...
Responses:
Dragon-Blade101: Heh. Just wait and see, ya?
Koyaha1: I hope you liked this chapter. It should fill in some of what you were wondering about. ^_^ Glad you liked the twist.
Faraday: Thank you!
Kendra Luehr: Thank you! And yes, I'll read one of your fics, just as soon as I upload this chappie. ^_^
Hecate: Heh. Yeah, they would be really weird parents if they named their kid Spike. If I ever have a kid, I'm naming it Spike, just for the fun of it.
Liz012014: Sorry it took so long...Hope you liked it...
Rei: Ahh, sorry this update took so long and I like your name! Rei is wicked.
Youkai-Onna: You're awesome, you know that? But I don't have any of those songs...But I promise to read and review your fics, alright? I hope you liked this chappie.
The Save Spike Society is now accepting payments in the form of reviews. Please click the little box and leave a note, the Society will then forward them to Dove, tie her to a chair, place a computer in front of her, and make her write chapter after chapter of Spikey goodness...Or at least what she hopes is Spikey goodness...