Yoho:) Okay, so here's chapter 2. I know it's all a little confusing still and Faye hasn't come into play yet, but give it time. It'll start getting interesting pretty soon. Another thing, you may have noticed the narrative perspective is third person and that's pretty much how it's going to be. The whole fic will be focused on Spike mainly, and it's really hard for a girl to write about man and what they're feeling the whole time. So bare with me and if you have any suggestions, please tell me.
Disclaimer: Bebop's not mine, not the concept, or the characters, but the plot is mine. Yay. Okay, enough of my lame notes. :))
Breaking Point
---2---
"Joe? That's your new name?" Celia exclaimed attempting not to burst out laughing.
"Yeah." Spike answered nonchalantly.
"That gets a zero for creativity. So who are you trying to hide from exactly?" Her violet eyes narrowed on him as she handed him the plate with bell peppers and beef. Spike shrugged and took whiff of the food. He smiled contentedly. He grabbed his chopsticks and almost gorged down the plate. It tasted real good. Jet's cooking had never been—he stopped the thought—he was thinking of the past once again.
"This is so good," Spike commented with a frown.
"I noticed by the way you swallowed the plate whole." She chuckled and smacked the spoon on the counter. "You haven't answered me."
"Answered what?" He had already grown disinterested with her questions.
"Who are you running from?" She smirked. "Or should I ask what?"
"It's nothing." His quiet tone became somber.
"Fine. Have it your way. I have to go now. Keep taking your pills, I'll be around." With that she left him almost as disinterestedly as she had been curious just a moment before. Spike kept his routine going and maintained a low profile as well. He wasn't running from anything in particular. He just didn't feel the need to go back and make a big deal of him being alive. What was the point of dealing with that? He just wanted to live so he could die, whenever the hell fate decided it was okay.
What he refused to admit to himself was his cowardice. The reason he didn't notify Jet was because he wouldn't know what to say or do. He would sit there staring while Jet probably stared back, completely speechless, or shot him for doing that to him. Either way, the prospects weren't any good and he didn't want to have anything to do with the past anymore. If he wouldn't die, then the past would. There would be some comfort in at least that.
The alarm clock signaled the time, one in the morning, as he entered his apartment. It had been another night of late deliveries. His customers liked the darkness to cloak their dirty secrets. Everyone in this universe had a dirty secret, or two, or a hundred. He dealt with the people that had a hundred. Spike was never a good judge of character, and at this point in his life, he could care less. It brought food to the table and it kept him entertained. Okay, so delivering secret brown packages to sleazes didn't exactly peak on the interesting scale, but what else could he do?
He decided to train for a while. The apartment resembled any other metropolitan flat. No more than four walls, the bed directly in front of the kitchen, the only other door in the place was to the bathroom. It could have been worse. It could have been a curtain instead of a door. His bed faced the living room/dining room area and the kitchen. He had cleared the couch and small table and introduced a punching bag into this small area between the kitchen and the bed. It lacked luxury and size, but there was enough room for him to train. He began dancing around the punching bag, his feet gracefully sliding and his whole body loose and flowing. He attacked his opponent with fluidity and seriousness. He punched, kicked, slammed, and practiced dodging invisible adversaries. Why did he keep doing this? There was no one to fight. After Vicious, he didn't want to face another opponent in his life. Killing your own best friend can do that to you. Nevertheless, he kept doing this, because it was the only escape he had left.
"Why are you so angry?" The firm voice echoed around his apartment. He halted a kick in mid air and his already heavy breathing turned into rapid gasps. He breathed in and slowly turned around. She stood there with a gentle sadness reflected on her face. The same expression he remembered her by.
"This is beginning to creep me out," he muttered to himself and immediately headed to the kitchen to find the pills that Celia had given him. He stared at the small prescription bottle and scowled. "She said this would work."
"I don't mean to, I mean, I'm just wondering," Julia stammered nervously and a bit embarrassed as well. He shook his head.
"No, it's not your fault. I think. God, what is happening to me?"
"I'm worried about you. You can't keep doing this much longer." She stepped closer towards him. His breathed anxiously as she approached him and flinched, expecting her scent to hit him any time soon, but she came closer and he didn't smell anything. She touched his shoulder slightly. He held his breath and again, nothing. It was like an inanimate object touching him back. It felt cold and lifeless.
"Are you a ghost?" he asked frightened from her touch. She immediately removed her hand.
"I don't know," she answered frankly.
"Then why are you here?" He only felt sad now.
"Because I can feel your hurt. Don't you want to live?"
"How can you of all people ask me that?" He raised his voice, arms flailing in the air with exasperation. She shrunk back from him. Her eyes turned a blue hue. He had always loved how they did that. Depending on her mood, her eyes would shift colors. If she felt sad, stressed, or worried they would be a deep ocean blue. If she was focused and determined then they would turn emerald green to a verdant hue. "I'm sorry." He apologized for his outburst.
"No, I understand. You think you deserve to die." Her jaded eyes focused on him. Julia seemed aggravated. "You're selfish to think that. You would waste my death and his death, all the pain we went through. You think we got off easy?"
Her words didn't make sense in his mind. He tried processing what she told him, but it only caused a confused expression to crawl on his face.
"Why are you here?" He asked again.
"To show you something. To show you why you're alive." Julia approached the front door and opened it. "Let's go for a walk."
"This is crazy," he muttered. "Can anyone else see you?" He was simply baffled at the fact he was walking next to what could be an ethereal body of his dead girlfriend. Just great, I'm losing it. He pulled out a cigarette from his jacket pocket and smoked it anxiously. He thanked god for nicotine, it always managed to relax him. Julia laughed bringing her delicate hand to her mouth. He smiled at that. He had always loved her shy laughter and the way her lips curled to a smile. God, it felt just like a dream. He walked next to her just as he had in the past, when they laughed and watched the stars together those nights. Those wonderful nights they had escaped for a few moments from their complicated lives.
"Those were wonderful times." She smiled at him seemingly satisfied.
"You can read my thoughts?" he asked, not surprised.
"I guess." She stopped in mid step and glanced to her side. Spike followed Julia's glare hearing the voices across the street.
"What's such a beautiful doll doing here so late at night?" The large man asked leaning against the woman by the old strip club entrance. Spike cocked his head to the side trying to see the woman the large man was blocking. Her dark violet hair danced with the soft wind. Her emerald eyes revealed a hint of deviousness in them. Spike gasped and crept towards the shadows in the alley behind him still watching them.
"Oh, just looking for someone." The woman answered coyly. The large man leaned in closer attracted by her yellow outfit, or the lack thereof.
"Oh, it's that so?" His voice sounded full of desire and urgent to take her. "And who would that be?"
"A bounty." Her face suddenly dropped the seductive smile for a predatory smirk. She immediately cocked the gun at the side of his head before he could even flinch. She kneed him and he crouched grabbing his privates. She smacked him on the back of his head with her gun. His body dropped on the ground and a pair of fuzzy handcuffs rolled out of his pants. She scowled.
"Pervert," she muttered under her breath and shrugged using his own toy to restrain him. She put her gun away. A taxi came by and stopped right in front of them. She smirked. "Just in time." The man began groaning and she commanded for him to get in. He felt himself cuffed, and scoffed at her, but got in the car. The cab whizzed away.
"Well, she's certainly more effective." Spike mocked to himself. She wasn't around to hear his jokes anymore. "Is this why we took a walk?" He asked the figure that had been present the whole time.
"You misunderstand me," Julia said.
Memories of the Bebop rushed to his mind. He had been so caught up with Julia and his past, that the Bebop had barely crept into his mind and when it did he just pushed it away, choosing instead to torture himself with what he thought of as his failure to save Julia, to save his best friend, to prove to himself he was alive.
"But you are alive. A part of you died, that's true. You still won't let it go."
"What part is that?" He asked her still glaring at the now empty streets before him.
"The Spike that died that day is a different Spike."
"The one you loved?" He felt hurt by her words.
"No, the one whose life was empty."
"My life wasn't empty! I had you. I had…" His thoughts trailed off.
"There was never any us. Don't you see? You need more than love to live. You need to want to live in order to love."
"That was your mistake, not mine." He spat back.
"I know, but you're making it yours."
Last night had disturbed him. He had walked back to his apartment alone. Julia had just vanished into thin air again. As much as he wanted to admit to himself that none of it had occurred, he knew that it had. In the morning news they reported that a small time offender with a bounty on his head had been turned in. He had been worth only 10,000 woolongs, but a living is a living. Since then, he hadn't stopped thinking about his time in the Bebop. Was Jet working along with her? Had Ed and Ein returned? He could never give her that much credit for doing all that on her own, not without messing it up, but then again knowing his worth in money and how easy of a capture he had been, it wasn't implausible. However, it bothered him. He wanted to know how she had ended up here. He walked into Mireya's Delivery using the back door and found the old man, Griss, sitting there going through papers with boxes stacked around him.
"How did that last delivery go?" He had gray hairs outlined through his dark head.
"Just fine. Are there anymore until tonight?" Spike asked, it was only three in the afternoon, and most of his deliveries happened at night. The old man shook his head and suddenly looked up at him.
"That's right! My buddy called back. That woman, Faye Valentine, turns out she has an apartment here on Mars. Different alias though, Monique something, she matched her description perfectly. Anyway, here's the info." He handed Spike a piece of paper.
"I appreciate it."
"So what's with you, Joe? Tracking an old girlfriend? I thought you were the man with no past."
"Nah, it's nothing like that."
"Careful. He hears she may be a bounty hunter. Hmm, but you already knew that, didn't you? Well, just be back here at ten tonight. Don't get yourself in trouble."
"Never." Spike smirked. The man eyed him and then sank himself back into his paperwork.
Spike glanced at the large building standing in front of him. It was located on the East end of town, not exactly known for its luxury, but more for its crime rate. The edifice looked over a hundred years old, paint chipping, even with signs of corrosion, and it probably wasn't erected more than forty years ago. It made no sense why Faye would be staying a shabby place like that. Not that the woman had the reputation of being logical. He began walking with his hands in his pockets to the entrance of the building until he saw the familiar yellow outfit emerging from the front door. He quickly slipped to the side of the building and watched her as she crossed the street and continued walking.
Why not follow her? It will probably pay off as good entertainment, he thought to himself. Where Faye Valentine went, trouble always followed.
He tracked her carefully and the crowd on the streets made it easier for him to blend in without her noticing. Besides, she seemed lost in thought and unaware of her surroundings. She finally stopped in front a small building full of offices for small time lawyers, doctors, accountants, and whatever kind of business imaginable. She took the elevator and he waited until he saw the elevator stop. The light brightened at four and paused there, and that floor only had two offices. One was for a cosmetic surgeon and the other for private investigator. So unless Faye wanted to have a total makeover and with her ego it was pretty unlikely, she would probably be visiting Mr. Makoto Uchida, PI. He used the stairs to climb the four stories and found the door with the PI's name inscribed on it. What in the world could Faye want with a PI?
He grabbed the small sound chip he had "borrowed" from Griss' place. No fun if I can't listen. He pinned the small black chip under the doorknob and put on his headset. He went inside the cosmetic clinic across from the PI's office and sat down in their waiting area.
"I looked around some more of what remains of the Red Dragon members, but I'm telling you they scattered." He heard the man say. Spike's eyes widened.
"So no one matching his description?" Faye asked. Then a long pause. "Someone has to know something, a body can't just vanish!"
"That's why I called you. One of the members I tracked down said he heard he was dead, as to what they did to the body…" The man's voice trailed off.
"That's all you've got?" Faye sounded irritated and impatient.
"I'm afraid so. I mean, it's not everyday a syndicate just disbands you know."
"Has Jet called yet?" Her tone became softer, almost maternal.
"No, not yet."
"Don't tell him this. Tell him someone saw a man matching Spike's description around the northeast part of the city, but not much follow up after that. I don't know, something like that."
"This will cost you another five thousand," he told her firmly and then a pause followed by the sound of a drawer opening and then closing. "It's a pleasure doing business with you. I don't know why you keep wanting me to lie to him though."
"It gives him hope," she said so softly, it was almost inaudible. "That's why you're here. If he was alive or wanted to be found, Jet would have found him. He's just using you to keep on hoping." The door opened and then closed. Spike let his headset slide onto his neck. He stared blankly at nothing, not knowing how to process everything he had just heard.
"Sir, do you have an appointment?" A young woman waved a hand in front of him.
"No, I was just waiting for someone," he said monotonously and left, leaving the girl dumbfounded.
Spike removed the chip from the door and slowly went down the stairs. He stopped at the second floor and sat on a step. They had been looking for him all this time. They hadn't given up. He heard a few steps and then someone sat next to him. He glanced over at her. He had already felt her coming. He grabbed Julia's hand and she let him simply looking back at him with same intensity that he stared at her. He felt the cold emptiness in his hand, like holding the air.
"I can't feel you," he whispered.
"They're not like you. They won't give up on you."
"Yeah, they're stubborn like that."
"Especially her."