Bebop Blues

Chapter 12: Memory: Is It Real?

Darkness.

That's all he could detect.

He opened his eyes.

"Big brother! Wake up! Santa Claus brought us presents!"

Brother?

Santa Claus?

Presents?

He opened his eyes. The world seemed large. Very large, expansive as it were.

"Yay! Roy! Spike's awake!"

Roy?

Mai's Roy?

A teenager walked into the room, brown hair buzzed short and grey eyes twinkling. The brown-eyed girl next to Spike had similar hair.

With a touch of green.

"What's wrong, Spike? You look like you've seen a ghost."

"Big Brother! C'mon! We gotta' see what Santa left!"

"Give me a minute, sis!"

Was that his voice? It sounded all wrong. Young. Innocent. Child-like.

He was in a memory.

As soon as the realization dawned on him, he was older.

He felt a sense of loss. Mourning. Pain.

He was in a graveyard. The teenager from earlier was on his left; the little girl was nowhere to be seen. There were two graves in front of him.

He was crying.

He remembered this.

He remembered this dream.

He had it on Venus just recently.

He knelt in front of the graves; his eyes were too blurry to see the names.

The teenager looked older than last time.

"We gotta find her, Spike," he heard him say.

Spike nodded weakly.

As he thought of the memory, it swirled and twisted again.

He was at Mao's steps.

The teenager was behind him.

Spike gathered that the teenager was 17 at this point.

His voiced had deepened.

"You don't have to do this, Spike."

"You won't avenge them or even sis. I have to do this because you're too weak"

Spike felt every bit of 15 that he was at the moment.

"No. You're just angry."

"I don't need your bullshit."

He opened the door to Mao's building.

And everything changed.

He was on an operating table.

"He'll lose that eye, Mao."

"Then give him a new one."

That's right. He knew he was 17 for sure now. He lost his eye in his first major fight for the Syndicate.

Mao got him a new one.

A nice one.

All cybernetic and wires and memories and suppression.

And it dawned on Spike.

His new eye meant the death of his old life.

And those memories.

"When you need them, you will know," he heard Mao whisper in his ear. "The homeward dove flies with broken wings."

He felt the final push.

He was at that church.

He was face to face with gunfire.

He fell to his death.

Julia never came.

Another push.

He was at that church.

He was face to face with Vicious.

Faye was running from the building.

And then he noticed it.

Something he couldn't recall from that time.

He supposed he had been too focused on Vicious to notice the man and woman on the second-floor above where Faye had been held captive.

The man appeared to be the teenager.

His brother.

Or something like that.

And the woman.

That was Mai.

Something was different about her.

She glowed.

He saw her grip his brother's arm. They shared a brief kiss before they dashed in opposite directions, taking shots at Vicious with liberty.

An explosion, and they went flying in separate directions.

And somewhere in all this, Spike died again as he fell from that balcony.

He remembered Faye humming.

The latest push.

He was at that church.

He killed Vicious. He remembered all this now.

He walked down those steps.

And he died his fourth time.

He had never met the woman who carried him.

Not until he awoke on her couch.

When she was humming the blues.

The blues for his brother.

Spike was swirling in these memories.

Swimming. Drowning.

"Is it real?"

That was Mai.

"You told me the past doesn't matter."

That was Faye.

"Maybe you'll know. Maybe you'll find him."

When did Mai say that?

He must have been asleep.

On her couch.

And his eyes shot open.

He looked at her, with her face pale and eyes heavy.

Faye's hands were on his back.

He had been in her lap.

He focused on Mai.

"We need to talk..."

He paused.

"...Mai Spiegel."