Something About Blue
By The Lady Razorsharp
DISCLAIMER: I don't own Cowboy Bebop; Sunrise Inc. does. I do, however,
own this original story.
For AO.
"…Bang…"
You know the old saying, "This is the way the world ends, not
with a bang but with a whimper?"
Well. I guess you could say that in my case, it did end with a
bang.
Not that I would have had it any other way, mind you. That's just
the fitting end for someone like me. No riding off into the sunset, no getting
the girl, no sequel, no rerun. Just one final bow, and then the curtain falls.
I must have looked pretty tragic standing there, bleeding from
half a dozen wounds, trying to keep my guts from falling out and tripping
me on my way down the stairs. That would have been graceful, wouldn't it?
No romance in tripping over your own intestines. No class. Not my style.
Of course from here, things look different. Clearer. All the walls
have been broken down. No more mountains to climb. Nothing to hide and nothing
to hide from anymore.
There's no fear here. No pain. No heartache. No disappointment. None
of that emptiness that chewed at me day and night, it's all gone, all of
it.
Jet. Damn, I miss you. I wish you could see this place. You'd
really dig it. Trees everywhere. And I haven't seen a sunset short of fantastic
since I've been here.
Wait, how long have I been here?
I can't remember. Yesterday? A few weeks ago? Or was I just there,
with you, eating that half-burned slop you called food?
Speaking of, I have a confession to make. You know how I told
you it tasted terrible? I lied. It was the best thing I'd ever tasted. And
you wanna know something crazy? It's because you cared enough about me to
make it for me. I know you know all this stuff. That's what I saw in your
face as you sat there and watched me inhale every last bite.
God, stuff like this doesn't even sound like me. It's this place.
Something happens to you when you get here. You...forget about all the bad
stuff. Well, maybe not forget, but it doesn't matter to you anymore. Like
you can see how it all fit in with the good stuff.
It took me a while after I got here to realize that I'd had some
good stuff in my life, that it wasn't all some big cesspool of existence.
I always said I was living a dream I couldn't wake up from, right? Now I
look back and I realize just how stupid that was. You know, I don't think
I even believed myself when I said that. Human beings are really messed up
sometimes.
I'm not saying that life should be rosy and happy all the time.
Rain's going to come up in the forecast sometime. What I'm saying is that
the times when life is rosy and happy should take you through the times when
it's not. Why didn't I see that back then? Why couldn't anyone convince me
of that? And more to the point, why didn't I believe them?
Faye tried to tell me something like that just before I left, didn't
she?
I have to smile when I think of her. I've replayed that conversation
in that hallway over and over again…
In case you were like me and didn't understand what we were saying,
allow me to translate.
Faye: I don't want you to go.
Me: I know. I don't want to go either.
Faye: Stay with us. Don't leave us like this.
Me: Is what I've been living for worth it? I have to know.
Faye: If I tell you something, will you stay?
Me: If I tell you something, will you let me go?
Faye: Stop! Don't say another word. It hurts too much…
Me: …and you know I won't be coming back.
I understand now.
If you see Faye…tell her I get it now. She'll know what I mean.
I won't say I'm sorry because then she won't believe I said it. That's okay.
I'll tell her when she gets here.
Hey, that's another thing. You're both supposed to be here--when it's
time, that is. How do I know this? Well, it's not like I called Information
or something. I just know. Maybe it's because you two cared about me and
cared about each other, when it came right down to it. I know we weren't
perfect. That's the whole deal, though. We weren't expected to be perfect.
It's times like this when I realize that even people like Vicious
had a chance.
What makes someone take one path and not the other? Didn't some poet
write about that a long time ago, about a road not taken? That's just about
the only thing that hurts, knowing Vicious could have chosen the light, and
instead chose the darkness. I miss him sometimes. I think about when we were
kids together, and I can see that darkness hanging over him even then. There's
nothing I could have done to stop it though. The darkness had always been
there. He was born in darkness and Death just bided its time for twenty-seven
years so it could take him back.
Before you ask, everyone's here--you know, Mao, Annie, Shin and
Lin--everyone who cared about me, even during the times when I tried to be
so cool and pretend I didn't care. They were all waiting for me when I got
here. Seeing them sure helped take away some of the pain of having to leave
you guys behind. I suppose that's common for newcomers. We hold on to our
lives so hard even though it's like sand pouring through our fingers. Eventually
that sand's gonna run out…but this place is full of broken hourglasses. Us
humans can't really bend our brains around the concept of forever, but I'm
here to tell you that it's real. You can't understand it until you've experienced
it for yourself.
The only thing I'm worried about here is Julia.
You guys probably think Julia and I are up on some cloud, having
one big heavenly shag or something. Stuff like that is nice to think about,
but it's not that important, really. I know, I didn’t believe it either,
but it's true. I miss her, though. I wanted her to be here, waiting for me.
I thought she was the first person I would see.
Everything is kind of blurry after Vicious and I said our goodbyes
up on that rooftop. I remember pain, though. God, do I remember pain. Not
just physical pain. Sure, I'd been hacked almost in half, but it was much
more. It was like someone was trying to wring my soul out from my body, twisting
and twisting so tight that I couldn't breathe. I couldn't scream. I couldn't
cry. Nothing. That's when I knew I was going to die, when I knew I would
snap the ties of the only world I'd ever known to take the first halting
step into a world I couldn't even fathom.
I wanted so bad to see you one last time. I knew I could count
on you. I knew if I could just see you, you'd help me through this, just
like all the other times you helped me and never knew it.
Then I heard something.
Faye was crying.
She was crying for me.
Put away your gun, Faye, I wanted to tell her. It seemed like
I stood there for a long time, watching her cry, wishing she'd stop. There's
no reason to cry, not anymore.
I think I scared the living way out of her, though. I'm not sure
she believed me, but I did manage to say her name. It sounded really weird.
"Faye."
Oh my God, she turned her head and stared right at me. My heart
was in my throat. You'd think that if I was dead, that wouldn't happen, but
it did.
I wanted so bad to touch her, to anchor myself back into her world.
If I could just reach her…
Then the Bebop was gone.
Bebop. That old tin goddess, with the leaky shower and the rust
and the empty fridge and that damned ugly yellow couch…
…and now the tears are running down my face, and I'm missing you
so damn much I'd say take it all back, just for one minute so I could tell
you…
Julia tried to hold on like I did. Except she didn't have Faye
to cry for her. Maybe that's why Julia lost her way.
I've been told by those who've been here for a while that there
are those who believe they're pretty good people, and they usually end up
here. Then there are those like me, who don't really think they're all that
good but really were all along, even if they didn't admit it to themselves.
Then there are those who believe somewhere deep down that they really are
bad, and they don't deserve to be here. Julia was one of those.
The Valley of the Shadow of Death. That's where those people go.
They live out their worst nightmares day after day. It hurts me to think
that she's there, watching the terrors of her life repeat on one endless
loop. Vicious giving her the ultimatum; kill me or die. Watching me bleed
nearly to death on the sidewalk outside her house. Running from Mars to Jupiter
and back again, being hunted until the final bloody climax of our pathetic
little tale.
Maybe when you get here we can go get her back. I don't think
I'm strong enough yet to do it alone.
You know something…I've had this song running through my head
ever since I got here…
Never seen a bluer sky
Yeah I can feel it reachin' out and movin' closer
There's somethin' about blue
Asked myself what it's all for
You know the funny thing about it
I couldn't answer
No, I couldn't answer
Things are turning deeper shades of blue
And images that might be real, maybe illusion
Keep flashing off and on…
~End~
AN: The setting of this story is inspired by and drawn in part
from the novel, "What Dreams May Come" by Richard Matheson. This wasn't the
story I set out to write, but this is where it took me. I love this song,
which is on the Cowboy Bebop OST of the same name, and it rips my heart out
every time I listen to it.
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