A/N: Since I am recreating, from here on in, a significant portion of material in the Bebop episodes, it behooves me to repeat: I don't own them. I just love them and seek to understand them. I have taken some liberties based on my very limited knowledge of spoken Japanese and quite possibly mangled the combination of translation, dub and original material for my own purposes.

My deepest gratitude is reserved for story editor Keiko Nobumoto, who wrote this gorgeous backward-looking arc and drilled it into me with the closing credits of each episode. You may think Watanabe when you think Bebop, but you should be thinking of Ms. Nobumoto.

XXXIII. Keep Dreaming

Vicious dressed mechanically, meticulously, the routine task a backdrop to his black thoughts. A towel alone might not be anything suspicious; she might have wrapped it around her hair, she might have mopped up a spill of water, she might have done anything at all. But it was not until he felt that damp cloth that he realized Spike had not acknowledged the comment about spending the night alone. Spike had not tried to tell him what he thought Julia needed. Spike had told him, plainly, what he had given her.

He threaded platinum cufflinks through tiny buttonholes and chewed on the inside of his cheek. Any other man would go mad with rage and jealousy, he knew. But in the back of his mind, so close to the memory of Spike in the days before Julia that it burned, was the memory of Anthony, the man who went on when his wife betrayed him with a traitor, the man who allowed the Syndicate to address her indiscretion and kept his eye on the prize. He could see it clearly: the view from the top of the stairs, just the left side of Spike's thin frame visible on the stool at the breakfast bar. The conversation, Spike's fury, the way his emotion overruled him as it did so often in those days, the steely evenness of Anthony's voice as he explained – but did not justify – what had happened to Leah. And most of all, the words Spike had neither understood nor heeded: "I hope you are never betrayed."

He looked at himself in the mirror, surprised by the depths of his own pale eyes, the scowl that deepened the lines of his scars and made his lips disappear in a thin line edged sallow. On Saturday, the White Tiger would fall. That was the prize toward which he had meticulously advanced for these last seven years, spending his blood and energy and what little was left of his heart. Even though Julia and Spike had betrayed him as a man, they were necessary to the achievement of the goal. If he did not acknowledge their personal trespass, they would work harder to please him, to help him. And when it was over, Anthony's words gave him leave to carry out the punishment they deserved.

"Settled," he murmured to his reflection, inhaling deeply and willing the scowl to fade to impassivity. He threw back his shoulders and nodded, pasting on a smile when he heard the lock turn in the front door, heralding the return of his treacherous paramour.

With the temperature of the Syndicate locker room shower set to near- scalding, Spike clenched his jaw and ignored the sting of water and soap in the scrapes and cuts Vicious had dealt him. It had been idiotic to speak plainly to him. The lack of consequence for the words only made Spike more certain it would come later, and be worse for the fermentation. Somehow, neither the pain of injuries nor the sense of impending doom could rouse him from the sluggish, dreamlike state that had plagued him all morning, though, ever since Julia had allowed Vicious to kiss her and bid him an airy farewell at the door.

He'd gotten more from her than he'd ever dreamed possible, though certainly not more than he'd dreamed. The best-laid plans of confronting her had crumbled. She accepted what he had to give, acknowledged it for what it was. But she did not love him, and had said it plainly in the not saying. She would not leave Vicious. Days and months and years stretched out in front of him, Astrid lost forever, Julia lost but close enough to watch and smell and think of. Nothing to drive his ambition, only the hollow tasks of the Syndicate and the unbearable reward for their completion: living. A reward he had never wanted before, until he poured himself into Julia. Now the chance of having that again, no matter how remote, left him terrified of dying in the same moment he dreaded waking from sleep to find himself still here in Tharsis City.

The Van would not allow him to leave alive. But perhaps they would allow him to leave dead. He stood with the spray of the Turkish shower cascading over his shoulders and sifted through a plan to end the stalemate after the Tiger hit. A plan, and one more plea to Julia, offering her the salvation she thought beyond her reach.

Friday dawned gray, heavy with the unrealized promise of rain. Spike dragged himself out of bed and dressed in one of the fine Italian suits he had not yet worn, adjusting its drape and toying with whether to button the jacket or leave it open over the elegant vest beneath. He'd barely left the room at Annie's since his confrontation with Vicious. No call had come from Julia. Annie left him to himself, pouring him coffee when he ventured out in his sweats and cotton slippers to the front room, not broaching the subject of Julia or Vicious or anything else. In three days, he learned the subtleties of solitude. Preparation for being dead. He slept, and when he was awake, it felt like a dream his slumber refused to reveal to him.

The city clock chimed nine and he gave himself a final appraisal in the mirror. His real eye, empty as his counterfeit, stared back. He tried on a smile, but it seemed to break tiny fibers in his jaw and cheekbones, so he left it behind and went to see the Van for the assignation.

Vicious met him in the hallway with a too-simple nod of greeting. Lin arrived shortly afterward, and shook his hand, but did not push him to speak. He knew his expression gave away his state of mind, but he couldn't summon the energy to pretend. When Julia joined them, they walked four abreast through the double doors into the chamber, nodding silently to Mao, Mato and Lao.

Only Sou Long spoke that morning. He surveyed them gravely, hands inside the sleeves of his formal robe, for at least a full minute before he opened his mouth.

"Tomorrow is the day when each of you may call forth your personal grudges, ambitions and vengeance and deal them out upon our foe," he began. "You will be joined by four of the Vanguard, ten in number only. You will arrive separately, equipped from the armory immediately beforehand, at the Hotel St. Solomon at three in the afternoon. The hotel serves the Tiger its ritual last meal beginning at two-thirty. Exercise discretions of your own devising, each of you. Be punctual. You will not speak. Whatever words you have to say to the enemy, you must say them with bullet and blade. The Tiger knows no language but the language of pain." He drew a breath and let it out in a long sigh. "No one target is more important than another in the gallery. Eliminate them all." He waited, but no questions came.

"All but Vicious are dismissed," he said, low, and gave a pointed look to Mao to show he was included in the dismissal. "We have need to speak with you privately." Vicious did not move or respond, but simply stood with his back straight and his right hand in his pocket, his left loosely balancing the sheath of the katana. The others filed out on heavy feet, and Julia looked into Spike's eyes with a long and helpless query, but she did not bid him farewell when he turned his back on her and went on down the hallway alone.

Spike hailed a cab outside the tower and directed the driver to the municipal spaceport. He handed over a hundred-Woolong note and asked him to wait before joining a line at the cash-ticket windows. The roll of bills he'd withdrawn the night before bulged in his pocket: almost a million in cash, suspicious upon review, perhaps, but not all of his money. The rest of it would be tithe for his transgression, filtered back into the coffers of the Dragon upon his demise. He could summon no more regret for it than he could summon any other emotion. Even hope seemed relegated to the life before this dream. Only resignation drove him forward, gave him breath to speak and ask for two tickets to TJ, animated his hand to count off the ridiculous fare for a next-day passage under assumed names: Solomon and Anastasia Pennell. He knew it was obvious, but they wouldn't stay – TJ was just a good place to buy a used zipcraft and leave without anyone asking questions. The tickets seemed to weigh more than the Jericho as he settled them in his pocket and returned to the cab, giving the driver an address in the warehouse district a few blocks from Julia's apartment. When the car arrived, he peeled off another thousand Woolongs and gave them to the driver with the terse instruction, "Falsify your route and your manifest." The driver nodded, dumbly, and pulled away from the curb with the wad of cash still clutched in his left hand.

His feet knew the way to Julia's too well now, and a cigarette propelled him there. Outside her door, for the first time in days, he felt something akin to waking life. He raised a hand to knock, but at the last moment tried the knob instead. It turned, and the door swung open before him, and there was Julia, standing by the table, lit by the gray half-sun through the window. She turned and looked up and squinted into the shadows. He did not reach for the light switch.

Instead, he moved forward a few steps, so she would know it was him, still in shadows. She opened her mouth, but no words came out. He pushed the door closed behind him without turning.

"When this is over, I'm leaving the Syndicate," he said. His own voice sounded foreign in his ears, too confident, too casual. She still did not move.

"You'll be killed," she breathed, after a gaping silence.

"I'll let them say I'm dead." He drew her ticket from his pocket and extended it across the table, holding her gaze. "I'll be waiting at the graveyard. Alive, of course." He felt a smile on his lips, though he didn't know what made him do it.

Julia swallowed. "Spike... I can't come with you."

It seemed beyond his hands now. He heard himself saying words he hadn't rehearsed. "Yes you can. We'll leave here, escape this place. This life."

"And go where? And do what?" Her voice threatened to break, only her lips animated.

"Leave. Go somewhere, live a life of freedom. Just like watching a dream."

She finally reached out to him, taking hold of the ticket. Her fingers avoided his own as though opposite magnetic forces swam beneath their skin. He swallowed, tried to smile a little wider, and turned away, opening and closing the door softly. His course was set. She had only to appear.

When the latch of the door clicked shut behind him, Julia let out a long, rattling sigh and her steady hand shook. She looked down, reading the ticket, thinking TJ was as good a destination as any for a man who had nothing he wanted and nothing to lose. He'd never been on the run. He couldn't possibly know the way days could not be accounted for, the way ports all looked the same, the practiced art of avoiding eye contact and disappearing when anyone with a tan suit and a cop's walk entered a room. She knew too well, and even so, she shook with fear: fear at how breathlessly compelling the offer was. She held the means in her hand. The flight left at seven Saturday night.

She wasn't sure how long she stood there before the door opened again. She looked up, expecting to see him there, and smiled, but Vicious came through instead. She barely had time to wonder if they'd spoken to each other outside before he crossed to her, looked into her eyes, and grasped the wrist of the hand that held the ticket.

He took it from her loose fingers and scrutinized it, muscles in his jaw working. She sat heavily in the chair at the table, staring out the window, refusing to speak or look at him.

"So. You were going to betray me?" He circled around her, and she heard the rustle of cloth, the click of a safety. Then it was there: the cold steel of a gun's muzzle, not the derringer, something heavier and far more ominous, pressed against her temple. "Did you really think you could just leave this life?"

"Vicious..." she bit back the words she was sure he knew. I've already betrayed you. I really did think so.

"Keep dreaming, Julia," he growled. "It's never going to happen."

She waited, wanting him to pull the trigger, knowing it would be quick and painless, staring out the window and seeing only Spike's lean, desperate face as he offered her freedom. The seconds ticked by, and she realized Vicious would give her no such reprieve. She turned so the gun rested square between her eyebrows, ignoring the cold steel, and looked up at him. "Are you going to kill him?" she asked. It seemed the only question that mattered.

He raised the gun, smirking. "Yes." He set its awful weight down on the table, and she saw it was a Colt, Syndicate-issue. "With your hands."

She could not hold back the gasp as she looked from the weapon back to him.

"You stay alive, or both of you die. Those are your only options." His cruel smile seemed to crystallize the air around him. "You will not be using this. I suggest you dispose of it permanently." He handed the ticket back to her.

Impassive calm washed over her as she accepted it. So small and impermanent and mutable a thing, this passage to nowhere contained in nylon fibers and wood pulp. Only ink and brittle false flesh. She opened the window, looked down to the street below and spotted a trenchcoated figure in the shadows, leaning against the wall next to the stairwell. Perhaps they had seen each other; perhaps he had hidden and watched Vicious go inside. But he stood there, and the flare and fade of the cherry of his cigarette blinked like a beacon she could see far off on shore, but would never reach. She waited for the wrenching pain in her heart while she tore the ticket into smaller and smaller pieces, wishing it would simply disintegrate, that she could rip it until its atoms fell apart and left no trace of what she destroyed along with it. But she felt only the cold, steady rush of the wet wind and Vicious' gray eyes on her, and finally she let the pieces go, fluttering down to the street below on tiny currents, to join Spike and his cigarette butts, a final farewell at once gorgeous and cruel.

"You will kill him at the summit," Vicious said, brisk and businesslike. "In the melee. Turn and put a bullet in his head. Do not miss. Remember that your own survival, your own life with me and in the Syndicate, depends on your success. I will defend you if necessary, after it is over." He grasped her shoulders in an iron grip and turned her square to face him. "I will never trust you again. From this point forward, you are another weapon in my arsenal, another trinket in my handbag. You have demonstrated a remarkable capacity for calculated cruelty. You will wield it in my name to keep your life." And then he kissed her, rough and angry, biting at her lips and digging his fingers into the flesh of her shoulders, while she stood immobile, empty as a spent casing and just as cold.