Work Text:
He was floating in and out of consciousness. There was a fog all around him, a haze which kept building in both his mind and outside it. He wasn’t aware of much more than his form on the ground somewhere, lying on his back, staring up into the mist.
Slowly a figure materialised. It looked like something in one of those old movies. “You are here.” It said.
“Mao.” He mumbled. “Aren’t you dead?” His voice sounded strained and raspy to his own ears.
“Aren’t you?” Mao asked him.
He tried to remember. Yeah, he guessed he was. Mao laughed. “Well, not yet but close.”
Then the form morphed and he was looking up at Bull.
“Did you live well, Swimming Bird?”
He thought hard, coming up with a blank. Then he remembered. “Julia?”
Bull chuckled mischievously.
“She was here too. But she left.”
“Left? Where?”
Bull laughed. “She ran away. Wasn’t that her nature? She ran and you chased?”
“I guess I did.”
“Come on.”
Suddenly he had strength again. His body felt whole. The pain had disappeared. Dimly, he registered that there had been pain in his body. It had been so tangled up in the anguish in his mind that he had not noticed it. He stood up.
“Did you live well?” Bull asked again, eyes twinkling.
He shrugged. “I tried.”
“You know what is a life well-lived, Swimming Bird?”
“No. But I have a feeling you’re about to tell me.”
“It is a life well-loved.”
“Well mine wasn’t exactly loved.” He felt subconsciously for a cigarette. Did they have those in heaven? Or was this hell? He was overestimating if he thought he was going to heaven. Hell then. Or maybe something in between.
“Yes, this is purgatory.” Bull answered his thought.
“Am I dead?”
“Not yet. But you have the choice in that.”
“What do I have to go back for?” But he knew that wasn’t true.
“What do you have here?”
“Nothing.”
“And there?”
“They won’t want me back. Not after how I left.”
The scene faded and then they were on the bridge of the Bebop. He could see Jet’s outline against the window.
“Shh…” Bull whispered to him. “He can’t hear us but let’s not disturb him.”
“He can’t….”
There was a shift and then he was standing right in front of Jet. The man sat silent, staring out at nothing. Were those…tears?
“Is he crying?”
Bull rubbed his hands together. “Wouldn’t you? He lost a brother. Don’t you feel like crying too? You lost a brother too.”
He realised he had tears on his face too. Did ghosts cry? He wondered which brother Bull was talking about. He had lost two that day. He realised he was crying for both.
“What about…?” He remembered the gunshots as he was leaving.
“She thought of joining you too…but then she did not. She soon may though.”
“Why?”
“You don’t know?”
The scene shifted and there she was, curled up on her side in the hallway where he had left her. He knelt down next to her. She seemed asleep but her gun was still tightly clutched in her hand and her face was streaked with the aftermath of tears.
“She will recover.” He whispered. “She will forget me. She must have seen things like this before.”
“There’s always a last straw, Swimming Bird.”
He looked up at Bull. “What will happen to her…to them…if I don’t go back?”
Bull thought for a moment. “The man will find a way to go on with his life but he will leave this place. He will never be the same again. He will not trust again.”
The man who took in strangers and cared for them like family would never trust again?
And what about the woman who already did not trust?
“She will…wither away. Shut herself from the world in the hope of following you wherever you have gone. But she will do it with the knowledge that you will still not want her. She will still do it.”
“But why?”
“You know her love, boy. Do not pretend.”
“Yes but…she can love again.”
“Not always.”
He knew it was true and he knew he was the one who knew it most. She didn’t have anything but this, a this that included him. There was nothing for her to live for if he did not come back. Wasn’t that an overstatement? No it wasn’t.
He felt a surge of love he always clamped down hard on, the love for her which he had carried for a while but which felt so…illegitimate.
“True love can never be illegitimate.” Bull spoke. He really wished the old man would stop reading his mind.
“Ok I will try.” Bull said with a chuckle.
“But I owed something to...” He trailed off at the thought. The woman who ran away and kept running? Who came to him in a moment of danger seeking help and never before then? What did he owe her?
“Stupidity.” Bull mused.
“Stop doing that!”
Bull spread his hands. “So what will it be?”
“I…If I choose not to go back then she will join me?”
He looked down at Faye. She would?
“Perhaps she will or perhaps she may get lost. She is already lost. She will never love again that is certain.”
He will never trust again and she will never love again? Did he matter so much? Did he spend all this time chasing mirages when there was so much right here in front of him? He denied himself again and again but never realised he was denying others too, people he had no right to deny?
He gently touched her forehead but his hand passed through it.
“I’ve made my choice.”
Somewhere in a hospital bed a man opened his eyes.