Author's Note: Yeah, this is the last part of the Aftermath of Cowboy Bebop. And no, actually, I didn't write this bit in response to reviews. I had intended to do this bit since I wrote the Hard Luck Woman chapter. Before anyone asks, no, I will not write a Vicious bit. Or a Julia bit. (I think the record will show that I loathe Julia.) Might write a follow up bit with another character, but I seriously doubt it.

Disclaimer: Cowboy Bebop, and associated characters, does not belong to me. I wish it did. But I am merely borrowing the characters for a bit. Besides, I haven't any money to be sued for.

You know, life is funny sometimes. You might have a stretch where there's only one possible path to choose, or you might have a part where you've got all kinds of branches to check out. I think the metaphor that I'm trying to come up with is a river. Yeah, that makes sense. Life is a river.

I suck at metaphors.

I know I didn't explain things very well to her, but that's the only way I knew how to. Of course, I didn't mean any of that crap about my eyes literally. I hope she got that, or she'll be very confused. What I was trying to tell her, as best I could, was that I've just got too much past to ignore it. A part of me has to keep living in the past. I think it comes from having to look over my shoulder too much.

I wish she hadn't gotten all hysterical at the end. Everything was so much easier, so much less complicated when I could pretend to be oblivious to her. Hell, I think she was oblivious. Or at least, pretending just as hard as I was. Even though she'd been a pain in the ass since the day I met her, I couldn't help liking her some. But I didn't want her involved in the shit that I knew would come and bite me in the ass. As it did. Hell, I was just trying to protect her. She'd had one run in with him already, and that was one too many. At least, protecting her was part of it. There was Julia, after all.

I hate thinking about could-have-beens.

It's amazing how being close to death clears the mind. More people should try it sometime. I think it would cut down on the bullshit remarkably.

Did Julia ever really love me? I wish I knew. When I met her, I was the biggest badass around. Generally speaking, I think that fairy-tales and love at first sight are crap. But I fell for her as soon as I saw her. Sitting there, singing, waiting for me to wake up after I had passed out in front of her apartment. How much of that was basic common sense? I mean, you've got a guy who's clearly organized crime of some sort; I wasn't really hiding it in those days. Gets hurt after a ruckus with some knuckleheads. Wouldn't it be a good idea to take care of him, particularly if you lived in his organization's turf? It would surely put you in good with the people who liked him. And God knows Julia didn't have to worry about anything after we hooked up. Not money, not protection.

The only thing she had to worry about was him. I don't know when he decided she belonged to him. I don't know if he even made that decision, or if she liked his prospects better than mine. She left me, or let me leave her, however it went, after things went sour between me and the organization. And I will admit that he was the rising star… Even I knew that.

I know that other woman's probably kicking herself for telling me what Julia had said. Maybe if I had thought about it some, I might not have gone. Was it really a coincidence that Julia never made the effort to seek me out until she was on the run from the organization too? Until after she'd realized what a crazy bastard he was, and she needed protection from the same guy who had been her protector before? She knew I'd come for her, that asshole and his so-called purge be damned.

It's kind of funny how the person I thought I really wanted to find me never did, and the one who kind of annoyed me always did. I kept hoping she'd leave, before she got involved in this mess. I thought she'd finally been able to find what she'd been looking for when she took off that last time. One less person to worry about. Except that it didn't work out that way. I'm sorry for what I did to her, but I don't think there was any way around it.

I am glad that the kid took off before the end. I don't think she would have understood. And I've already caused enough grief. Don't need the added guilt of traumatizing a kid. …More than I already have.

I keep going back to branches and choices. The river branches, and I don't know where each one will lead. Sometimes, they end up in surprising places. A branch I thought led one way goes somewhere else entirely, and the one I'm looking at comes from the most unexpected direction.

My family, the one that I made from the organization, is dead. But maybe my real family is still here, waiting for me to pull my head out of my ass.

The others will be better off without me, since I'm not here to bring the fire down onto them. But they tend to do that themselves, even without my interference.

I've lost Julia. But maybe I never had her in the first place.

I think I've pretty much destroyed any chance for a relationship with Faye, assuming I was willing to give it a shot. But then, Julia never tried to stop me.

Vicious said he was the only one who could kill me, and I'll admit getting killed by anyone else would feel like a screw up on my part. But do I really want to give him the credit of being right?

There's a lot of questions I don't know how to answer. Maybe they don't have an answer, or maybe the answer's what I want it to be.

It's like I said. Life is a river. Right now, I'm in the quiet bit right before the rapids. There's a big fork in the river up ahead. Do I go left or right? If I go one way, I'm going to go over a waterfall, and there's no way back. But I don't know what the other branch is like, or where it'll go. And this time, no one is going to make the call for me.

It's a hard choice to make.

Author's Note Addendum: I never promised a resolution.