Wreck of the Old 97
By milkdrunk
She never could understand their allure. (Using the remote, she switched off the television.)
I'll bet you never heard ol' Marshal Dillon say
"Miss Kitty, have you ever thought of running away and settling down?
Would you marry me if I asked you twice and begged you pretty please?"
She'd have said yes in a New York minute
They never tied the knot
His heart wasn't in it
He just stole a kiss as he rode away--
He never hung his hat up at Kitty's place
(And my heart is sinking like the setting sun
Setting on the things I wish I'd done
It's time to say goodbye to yesterday
This is where the cowboy rides away
We've been in and out of love and in-between
And now we play the final showdown scene
And as the credits roll, a sad song starts to play
This is where the cowboy rides away)
As a child, she would angrily (anger borne from sorrow, from not understanding) demand to know why. Why did the (sometimes-not-so-) nice man, the saviour, always leave? Why couldn't he—why wouldn't he—just stay? Please? (Heartbroken pleas would later turn to petulant Go, then's.)
As a woman grown (and then, as a woman grown: understanding), she resented the romance. Recoiled from the myth. Hated the ending, the (stranger-cum-hero-saviour's, the girl who found him's, the whole damned town's) doomed future that lay just beyond the silver screen.
Only she didn't know all this. How could she remember, when lifetimes were lost to her?
What she did know was this:
Right there, right then, she had her very own cowboy.
And she could have murdered him. (Her gun wouldn't do for this; she wanted the satisfaction of bare hands on bare skin.)
Desperado, why don't you come to your senses?
Don't they see? Don't they know? The day will not be saved, the world not won, when they mount and ride away. The town will succumb to the next villain, the girl will be lost (if she hasn't already disappeared into a sunset of her own).
He just stole a kiss as he rode away
She'd be damned if she sent him off with a clap on the back, with an ice-cold (on the house!, with gratitude, for your trouble) sarsaparilla. A kiss. (For good luck or goodbye, it didn't matter. He hoped to die.) She was no Miss Kitty; she had no brave, tremulous smile—tears held valiantly, if not completely successfully, in check—to offer.
(We've been in and out of love and in-between
And now we play the final showdown scene)
Instead—
(The final slowdance—they've an entire, rusted history of tangled defenses, drawn weapons and cast-off armour between them:)
Bang!
Bang!
Bang!
Bang!
Bang!
(It's murder on the dancefloor.)
--she saluted him as best she could. And damned him, in the same breath.
"Would you marry me if I asked you twice and begged you pretty please?"
She'd have said yes in a New York minute
If he'd asked—if he had asked, she would have said, "No."
She wouldn't deign to honour a coward.
They never tied the knot
He was a coward.
He never hung his hat up at Kitty's place
They both were.
Cowards, both of them.
(Cowards, all of them.)
And my heart is sinking like the setting sun
An echo resounded throughout the hall, the slow, measured clicking of boot heels—executing a turn and walking away neatly—punctuated the chasm (and silence) between them:
Fuck you, Space Cowboy.
Mulish, obstinate, spiteful man.
(She smirked, wryly. She would have liked to fuck him. To fuck—to fuck him up, down, and over.)
Setting on the things I wish I'd done
She had her own battles ahead—and they didn't include saving a certain lanky, moppy-headed maverick from his own twisted sense of happy ever after (his long-anticipated final showdown. Suicide.). No, she wouldn't begrudge him poetic justice, however fucked-up and wrong it might be (Oh, you're a hard one, but I know that you've got your reasons): so, no, she would not follow and drag him, kicking and screaming, at gunpoint and then almost-immediate chloroforming (because, when had gunpoint ever deterred him?) from the would-be battlefield, nor would she, alternately, prevent him from leaving the ship (her) at all. Neither would she draw her gun and fight (fall) with him, for him. (You only want the ones that you can't get.)
The stupid, inevitable Greek tragedy. (A Western that staid its course and refused to go awry, regardless of a participant's wishes. Regardless of the wishes, the entreaties of a little girl. Regardless of her wishes. (Did she wish otherwise?) No in-the-nick-of-time, no irony as a saving grace.) (His grace, her grace, disgrace.)
The angel had feet of clay, after all. (Only she refused to crumble.)
And as the credits roll, a sad song starts to play
The faithful mount, battered though it was, awaited its master—Miss Kitty, with a different set of convictions and a (loaded) gun.
This is where the cowboy rides away
(She never could understand their allure. She would have rolled her eyes and groaned, had she known that she would become one of them, in one of them. A goddamned cliché, that's what it—what she—was.)
Slowly going the way of the buffalo in the lonesome crowded West…
Thanks for reading. Thanks to Chey for jump-starting my typing fingers.
I do not own Cowboy Bebop, or any characters therein.
Neither did I pen the songs contained herein: "Should've Been a Cowboy," "The Cowboy Rides Away," and "Desperado" were performed by Toby Keith, George Strait, and the Eagles, respectively.