Ugh, sorry that this chapter took so long, guys. But I do have a (hopefully) good excuse! I had six pages of chapter 11 written, with eight pages planned…and then my computer crashed, and it wasn't backed up. As you can imagine, the rewriting was not easy, nor was it by any means quick. I spent most of my Florida vacation agonizing over it. I've tried to recreate the first draft, which was a lot better than this, but it didn't go the way I'd have preferred it.

Anyhoo, I really hope you can enjoy this chapter anyway. Please take a minute to let me know what you think.

Disclaimer: I don't own Cowboy Bebop and am making no profit or income from this story.

Warning: Brief but vile language.

Note: Chapter title from Yoko Kanno's "Butterfly."

Kites Without Strings -- Part Eleven: The Knot That Comes Undone

By Gundam Girl

There was a mole on Titan. Information was being leaked, coordinates were being revealed and, no doubt, money was being exchanged. A good job was being done by a good informant. And the squad leaders on Titan were getting nervous.

Vicious didn't know who the spy was. Vicious didn't really care who the spy was. It wasn't him; and too bad, because the money was probably good. But he wasn't dead –

unlike the twenty or so men that had been shot to death in an ambush the previous night that the troops had been forced to retreat from.

Men kept grumbling about honor being shattered. Honor didn't get shattered, in his opinion. Things like glass and ice got shattered. To his way of thinking, honor wasn't pretty like glass, and it wasn't cold like ice. Honor was just a large burden, one he bore steadily if not happily. And his honor had absolutely nothing to do with Titan, or the war, or the men who had died.

To Vicious, if a man was stupid enough to let himself get killed in the first place, he had no right to live.

It was the one thing Gren hadn't talked about. If someone tried to approach him with the topic of the ambush, he simply lit up a new cigarette and started talking about his saxophone, easily discouraging conversation. No one in the squad liked to hear the purple-haired man go on and on about that damn horn.

So most of them never saw beneath the distracting annoyance Gren let loose. But Vicious, being forced to spend most of his time with the musician, could tell that there was something happening in Gren's mind.

Vicious had never been one to be fooled. Many occasions in his life could prove that.

The squad carried on, despite the casualties. They were marching to the southernmost quadrant of the planet, sparing rations and preparing to eventually signal in to the Saturn mainland ships for resource backup. All of the walking gave the soldiers a lot of time for free conversation.

Vicious normally didn't prefer to just openly speak of anything, opting instead to march in silence. He remained as observant on the scorching, sandy moon as he did on the cement and steel city of Tharsus.

And so it wasn't surprising when he picked up on the words of the pair of soldiers walking in front of him.

"…hear the big-shots are way pissed about the dead guys."

Teenagers, Vicious thought with some impatience. Boys pretending to be men, fighting a war. He'd never been liked them.

"No kidding. Some ass is slipping shit to the rebs. I'd be fucking mad too."

"Yeah, but now they're holding interrogations for almost everyone in the squad by midnight tonight. That means us."

"Everyone?Dude, what the hell do we have to do with this?"

"Nothing. Which is what you tell them, moron."

Vicious didn't need to hear anymore. From the shadow that his uniform cowl cast over his face, his lips curled into a smirk he hadn't worn in some time.

An interrogation sounded like a way to make some progress. They weren't getting anywhere with the rebels and frankly, Vicious didn't give a damn. But he had things to do once he got back to Mars, and the sooner he did, the better for him. He was tired of waiting for this war to end.

So he would quicken the pace a bit. And go home.

And once he did…then he would see.

o0o

Julia couldn't feel anything. It was all she could do to call Yenrai's private apartment and talk in fast, urgent tones in response to the man's quiet, patient ones. If asked now, Julia wouldn't have been able to remember a single word that had been said. She only recalled the feeling of utter panic and fear that had filled her whole being to the brim and still had yet to ease away.

She felt like a glass bottle that had been filled with water that had frozen and was about to burst into thousands of small pieces. Julia half-expected to break apart any second.

She was back in the lobby of her apartment building, sitting on the chilly floor with Spike's damp and bloody head in her lap, the rest of his long body sprawled everywhere. He was breathing loudly, and at least that told her he was still alive – but his breath came out raggedly and not at all in any constant rhythm.

Julia felt like she had been sitting here with him like this for as long as it had taken for her to live this long, but in truth it had only been five minutes since Yenrai had hung up the phone and she had dropped hers on the ground to return to Spike.

At last, she heard the sound of a car engine and looked out the transparent door in time to see a black, tinted-windowed limousine roll in through the rain.

Three men in Red Dragon trench coats practically jumped from the back of the car and hustled inside, moving toward Julia with their arms outstretched to grab Spike. Instinctively, Julia's hands tightened around her lover.

"Miss Mandir," one of the agents said to her. "Miss Mandir, you must release Mr. Spiegel. We can't help him if you—"

She was faintly aware of her head shaking, of her hair swinging back and forth as lifelessly as she was currently feeling.

"Please, Miss Mandir. If you don't…"

The man suddenly fell silent, and in the same instant Julia felt a wide, warm hand on her shoulder. "Julia?"

Julia turned her head and lifted it until her face was aimed upward at a man of medium height, his face slightly wrinkled with age, his head still full of dark hair even though it could be suspected that the hairline had receded a bit. The only thing about him that really struck Julia was that he wore a small, gentle smile despite his grim surrounding. The smile arrowed straight into Julia's soul and seemed to snap her from her state of suspended emotion. Tears welled in her eyes as her hands moved away from Spike. The three agents wasted no time, carefully lifting Spike from her lap and carrying him to the limo.

"Mr. Yenrai," Julia breathed, feeling suddenly exhausted in body if not exhausted in worry. "I don't even know how to say—"

"Often when we do not know how to say something," Yenrai cut in soothingly, "it is best to say nothing at all." He bent over a bit and took her by her elbow, helping her to her feet. With patience, he reached into his pocket. Julia found it strange that, despite her immense desire to get Spike to the hospital, the syndicate leader was in no desperate hurry.

From his pocket he pulled a small square of cloth. Julia could make out the tiny, monogrammed initials of MY. With a start, she realized why he hadn't taken her hand instead of her elbow when helping her up. Her fingers were stained by lines and smudges of liquid red.

Spike's blood.

Instead of immediately accepting the handkerchief and wiping herself clean, she slowly clenched her hands, making fists that trembled lightly. In Yenrai's mind, it seemed Julia was embracing Spike in a way that people never thought of as cherishing.

Julia opened her hands again and took the handkerchief with a grateful nod, thoroughly scrubbing her skin. At his word, she threw the cloth into a nearby trashcan. And with an odd serenity between them, they went to the limousine to help a person both Mao Yenrai and Julia held very dear.

"Do not worry too greatly," Yenrai said. "Spike is strong. He will recover."

o0o

But Mao Yenrai was a wise man. And he wisely had not told Julia that Spike would recover completely.

Yenrai kept very calm, sitting straight in a waiting room chair in a sector of a not-so-known but good hospital that the Red Dragon Clan had bought out for syndicate purposes. He was drinking tea, sipping occasionally while looking through paperwork from his designer briefcase.

Julia envied his peaceful mind, but she couldn't even bring herself to try and mimic that middle-aged man. She didn't pace (exactly), more she dragged her feet short distances in the center of the waiting room. Every now and then she switched locations and moved to the window to stare out of the pane of glass and look at the soaked city streets. She barely took notice of the Red Dragon agents stationed around the room – their eyes watched her every move from behind their dark glasses. She wished it would freaking stop raining. Although, she reflected, even if it did it wouldn't improve her mood or settle her emotions.

Things remained this way for three hours. Immediate surgery had commenced as soon as they group had entered the hospital and Spike had been swept away. Julia's heart had never felt so heavy in her life.

By the window, she saw the lights of the lampposts outside, saw their yellow-orange glow haze and illuminate hundreds of raindrops as they sped to the pavement. A nearby jazz club was playing music full-blast. The odd image and sounds influenced her senses and made her suddenly think of Ganymede. Through her mind's eye, she could see herself, huddling close to a heater that only worked half of the time, in a house that was hardly more than a shack, listening to the music and the drunken laughter from the casino just across the street outside.

She'd always thought it ironic that so much money was only fifty feet away from her, and her mother had possessed so little of it.

Julia shook her head quickly, drawing herself from her reverie. She rarely recalled her past, preferring to think about the present. But she understood why her thoughts had turned there; as far as her heart was concerned, even her dismal childhood was brighter than the idea that Spike might be suffering.

"What do you recall?"

Julia turned to see Mao Yenrai standing just behind her left shoulder. She nodded curtly, a sign of respect, and faced the window again, pressing her fingers to the glass: it was so cold…as cold as Spike's skin had felt when she'd touched him after he'd fallen unconscious on her stoop. "I recall things that I should have forgotten by now," she answered Yenrai.

Julia saw his reflection smile in the window. "I have found it to be true that the things we wish to forget are usually the things we remember most clearly."

She thought of the countless pains and aches Vicious had caused her, both physically and emotionally, and Julia knew he was right. "So it seems," she said with a weak smile.

"And that," he told her, "is how you will find it to be when you are unable to ever forget how much you are in love with Spike Speigel." At her astonished look, his expression only grew more pleasant. "You are like water, my dear. I see through you with great clarity. And like water, you flow with continuity. I'm glad. I would hate to know that Spike loved a woman who would not care for him just as faithfully."

Julia didn't know how to reply to such a thing, so she took Yenrai's advice from earlier that evening and stayed silent.

"While you were caught up in your memories," Yenrai went on in her quietness, "I spoke with the surgeon that operated on Spike. He believes that Spike will be very well with time and rest. He will be scarred, and for a while, he shall be weak. Personally, I believe that someone with Spike's will and energy has the ability to increase his healing time considerably, and I've confidence that Spike will be just that way. Every one of his injuries was, after all, reparable. With the exception," Yenrai said before Julia could be too overwhelmed with her joy, "of his right eye.

"The doctor said that there was nothing they could do. They will be replacing it. Fortunately, with today's wondrous technology, it will be easy to give him a prosthetic made of actual eye tissue. But I was told as well that it will impossible to make the prosthetic's iris an exact match of Spike's working eye. His genes are rather remarkable, and the color of his eye cannot be copied. But it will only be a shade or two darker. It will not be noticeable." Yet, even as he spoke, Yenrai's voice was serious.

"I will notice," Julia blurted. The thought had been so loud in her head that she hadn't been about to contain it.

"I will be disappointed in you if you don't. People who care for Spike and know him well will be able to distinguish it. If there's one thing that people all grasp for, it is familiarity." Yenrai sighed slightly. "The operation will be starting in ten minute's time. I am told it is fairly simple. Perhaps you should go home and rest, my dear. Spike will be here when you return."

The thought of leaving Spike in the place, with its plain white walls and pale lights, and medicinal smell made Julia feel instantly rebellious. But she maintained her manners in front of Yenrai. "With all due respect, Mr. Yenrai, I would prefer to stay. I don't think I have the strength to go."

Yenrai could only smile. "What you mean is, you have no strength without Spike Speigel. Very well. Since you impress me, I shall do what I can to accommodate you." In a few minutes, he had it ordered for a cot to be put in the room that Spike would be convalescing in. Julia was to sleep there and have free access to the room whenever she wished for it.

Julia thanked him heartily as his agents were preparing to take him out of the hospital. "I won't forget this kindness," she told him honestly. It was the most she had ever received in her life.

"It's true that I am doing this mostly for Spike," Yenrai told her. "But it is also true that I am glad to being doing something for you as well. Just remember," he added as he put on his coat and opened the door that would lead him into the night rain, "that when Spike awake as looks at you, though his eyes will look different, it will still be the same soul behind them." Saying so, he nodded to the woman and walked out.

As Julia followed a helpful nurse to the room assigned for Spike, she couldn't help but find it amazing that the man that had been so gentle to her was the same man who had coldly ordered the execution of a betraying agent at a banquet.

But, even though he was cold as well as gentle, he was also correct. Spike would be the same. His eyes would be different. And she would not be the only one to notice it.

Vicious would notice as well. And then there would be more questions for him to ask, and fewer answers that Julia wanted to give.

o0o

Vicious found it fitting that his interrogation had been scheduled at a time past dark. Men as heartless as he knew he was deserved no day, no mercy. This he accepted as he walked into the wide, canvas-walled tent where the squad leaders were questioning men.

Upon first seeing the two men in charge, Vicious could tell that they had received no luck. They looked tired and exasperated – neither looked particularly angry. Chances were, they just wanted something, anything that might clue them in to who their mole was. One thing was for sure: they were not happy to see Vicious. But he would change that.

"Who is this?" asked one of the men. He was well-muscled, but he was almost completely bald.

The other was thin and ruddy-faced. His lower lip seemed to large for his mouth. "He's called Vicious. His last name is undisclosed."

"A man named Vicious with an undisclosed last name?" the bald man asked. "Who in God's name recruits for us?" The ruddy-faced man leaned over to him and whispered something into his ear, and his whole face changed from irritated to comprehension. "I see," he murmured.

"That's right," Vicious thought. "The big, bad syndicate."He was half-amused, half-disgusted by their fear. He could practically smell the cowardice emanating from them.

"Well," the bald one said. "Vicious…take a seat. Are you aware of why you're here right now?"

"The same reason everyone else has been coming here," Vicious replied. He felt like a schoolboy must feel when sent to the principal's office. The difference was he wasn't in trouble and was much smarter than the principals.

"Yes, well… There is a traitor in the squad. A defect. We are looking for the defect and preparing to annihilate it. We need to know what you know. And considering your…influence," muttered, the ruddy-faced man, "we find it likely that you might know more than others. Which means you could know at least something."

"I may," Vicious said. "But a person doesn't need influence to find details. If he did, would you two not be more informed right now, gentlemen?"

Both men seemed highly embarrassed.

"At any rate," Vicious told them smoothly, "I am prepared to give you some information that will assist you greatly." They looked far too eager, he noted. Idiots. "However, I am not a man known for charity."

"We would assume that. What do you have in mind?"

"Immediate and permanent leave." Vicious didn't miss their instant reactions of surprise, closely followed by doubt. He didn't care if the men thought he was a coward if it meant getting what he wanted. "I will accept nothing else."

Knowing they had no choice but to accept, the men agreed, calling for a secretary to have the paperwork drawn up. Once the order had been given, they opened their ears to the Red Dragon Clan captain again.

Vicious's mouth was twisted with cruelty as spoke. "I wish to bring your attention to a man you have yet to question. His name is Grencia Mars Elijah Duo Eckner."

o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o

Well, despite all the Gren fans that HATE me now, I must say I had a good time writing this chapter. (Don't look at me, like that, you Gren fans. I love Gren too, but we all knew it had to happen eventually!) I enjoyed writing for Mao Yenrai. He's such an interesting person and it was an experience to try to grasp his personality. I hope it is approvable.

Thank you all for staying with me. I apologize for the long wait. Let's just hope my computer doesn't crash again, eh?

Review please!