Cowboy Bebop

Masquerade

By Amos Whirly

Introduction

     I fired my gun.  I wasn't shooting at anything.  The barrel pointed toward the ceiling, and my finger pulled the trigger once, twice, three times. 

     I guess I thought it would make him stop.

     But it didn't.

     He kept walking, and I never saw him again.

     I suppose he died.  He knew it would happen some day, and I think he might have known it would happen that night he came back.  He came back to say goodbye.  I see that now that he's gone.

     The same day he disappeared, ISSP found the dead body of woman on the roof of a building.  Unidentified.  Shot once in the back. 

     Out of grim curiosity I went to the morgue to see her.  She was blonde haired, blue-eyed, and absolutely beautiful. 

     It was Julia, the woman who I had saved from Red Dragon assassins only days earlier, the woman for whom Spike Spiegel would have done anything. 

     It was then that I knew Spike had to be dead.  If he were still alive, he would have been at her side.

     It made me wonder if she had died alone.  Had Spike had been there with her, or had she felt the life bleed out of her on that cold, empty roof?  I hoped for the first.  No one should die alone. 

     Even though Spike probably had.

     After I saw Julia, I ran.  I got back to the Bebop and climbed in my ship and flew away as fast as I could, with little or no explanation for Jet.  I knew even then that it was selfish.  Jet was still wounded, and with Ed and Ein gone he would have to fend for himself.  But I needed to be alone.

     I flew until my cells were almost empty, and I managed to bring in a small bounty head for just enough to recharge my ship.  Then, I kept flying.  I flew until I got home.

     Earth.

     I went back to my house, or what was left of it, and I stayed there for a while, thinking, remembering, mourning.  I watched the sun rise and set, and I watched the moon dance across the starlit sky, the lights from the colonies bright against the velvety blackness of space.

     I'd hated him.  Most of the time I argued with him or griped at him.  But on those rare occasions that we actually talked instead of yelling and shouting, I had found a friend beneath his rough exterior.  He'd always said he hated women, kids, and animals.  Ironic.  That's who he ended up living with.

     He never said much, but you could always read his eyes.  Well, his eye.  He'd lost one of them due to an accident, and it had been replaced with a mechanical substitute.  But his one good eye—I could always read his emotions in that one good eye.

     After a few days at home, I climbed back aboard my ship and headed to the Bebop.  I found Jet and made peace, and we tried to pick up the pieces of life. 

     A week later we did something the three of us—me, Jet, and Spike—had always fantasized about.  We brought in a 300 million wulong bounty. And since Spike hadn't been there to cause millions of wulongs worth of damage, we actually got to keep most of the payoff.  Jet and I shared a bittersweet laugh about that.

     No more bell peppers, mushrooms, and instant soba noodles for the crew of the Bebop.  We could actually eat a decent meal every night.

     I bought new clothes, a new gun, and spent a day at the races, but Jet did something with the money that I never expected.  He bought a plaque and fastened it to the wall in the lounge area of the ship.

     Spike Spiegel, it read.  2044 – 2071. Cowboy, Partner, and Friend.

     Since no one had found his body, there had been no burial.  Since he had no family, there had been no funeral.  It only seemed right to Jet to remember Spike, I guess.

     It's been a year now.  I still live on the Bebop.  Jet and I get along well enough.  We still fight, but for the most part we're able to keep the peace.  We bring in bounty heads every now and then, and the 300 million is almost gone, used up in repairing our ships and purchasing supplies.

     I stand alone in the lounge as the lights on the ship turn off for the evening, and I stare at the plaque on the wall.  I trace the letters of Spike's name with my slender fingers, and a smile comes unheeded to my lips.

     "Life isn't the same without you, idiot," I murmur softly. "But, keep dreaming, wherever you are."

     I turn around, and I walk to my quarters.

     The door shuts behind me.