not_that_spike

Legos are too small for Beth Junior's tiny hands, but these Duplo things aren't bad either. Amazing that they can still find them: there aren't a fuck of a lot of kids around these days. But they scored this farm set and it's extra fun because he has this book that matches. Little Beth sits there, legs splayed, palms on her thighs, absolutely rapt with attention.

"All right, Junior. Here we go. I read, you act it out." He hands her the farmer figurine. "Farmer Brown has a problem. His cows like to type. All day long he hears Click, clack, moo. Click, clack, moo. Clickety, clack, moo."

It doesn't matter that she doesn't get it about typing and why the hell would she know that? She cups her ear with her hand, listening intently. "Click, clack moo," she says. solemn-faced and intrigued, so he continues. This is a new book for her.

"At first, he couldn't believe his ears. Cows that type? Impossible! Click, clack, moo. Click, clack, moo. Clickety, clack, moo." The picture shows the farmer running to the barn; Junior makes the Duplo farmer jump up and down in her hand. "Hey, good one, Beth. OK. Here we go." Each turn of the page is like the unveiling of another treasure. The next page shows the farmer reading a note on the barn door. "Then, he couldn't believe his eyes. Dear Farmer Brown, The barn is very cold at night. We'd like some electric blankets. Sincerely, The Cows."

Junior giggles, peering over at the picture book as he turns the page.

"It was bad enough the cows had found the old typewriter in the barn, now they wanted electric blankets! 'No way,' said Farmer Brown. 'No electric blankets.' So the cows went on strike. They left a note on the barn door. Sorry. We're closed. No milk today. 'No milk today!' cried Farmer Brown. In the background, he heard the cows busy at work: Click, clack, moo. Click, clack, moo. Clickety, clack, moo." He moves three cows over to Beth Junior so they can be closer to the farmer, then reaches over and tickles her tummy. She roars with laughter.

"Want me to keep going?"

"Yeah!" She abandons the farmer in favor of the cows now, because the next page has more of them.

"The next day, he got another note: Dear Farmer Brown, The hens are cold too. They'd like electric blankets. Sincerely, The Cows." The look on his face is pure shock. "Imagine that, Junior. What would you do?"

Beth absolutely beams. "Give them bankits!"

That's my girl, he thinks. So would he, but hell, he's easy. And now he pauses for just a minute, because this woman who absolutely takes his breath away just walked into the room. Junior breaks into a big toothy grin. "Mama, mama, mama! Cows! Cows with notes!"

The smile on his Beth's face is priceless.

"Okay, check it out." He's never been big on the whole shut your eyes and don't open them until I say so thing. For one, it's annoying as hell and for another, who can stand it anyhow? But still, this was kind of worth a little bit of surprise.

In Beth's arms, Junior's eyes go wide and she lets out a perfect "ooh." As if in all her year and a half of wisdom, she remembers this place? He doubts it; they've been to a hell of a lot of places in her short lifetime and not all by choice. But this place is kind of cool: it's far enough outside Paris so not very many people just happen by but they can still be in the city in just under twenty minutes at a leisurely walking pace. One thing he's noticed on this trip is that it's the cities where people have congregated, and out of necessity. When half a planet's population just drops dead, it leaves a lot of empty space. Outskirts that used to be convenient when everyone drove are now considered too far out, a pain in the ass, dangerous. Even with bicycles, people want to be where other people are and he kind of can't blame them. There's safety in numbers: call it a tribal mentality or whatever, but the human population as a whole has reverted back to that in a lot of ways.

One bounty hunter displaced in time and space happens to think that's just about perfect: it means he's got fifteen or twenty minutes of space between him and most visitors and if he's here, he can take off that cloak and just be himself. Spend some quality time with his woman and their little aijou and not have to worry about someone knocking at the door to take a census or any of that shit. And this place... well, it's pretty cool. Like a lot of once-valuable (and now largely useless) properties outside Paris it's built of stone, which keeps it warm in the winter and cool in the summer. It's all on one floor which means no stairs to navigate with a sleeping Junior, and almost all of the windows are still intact. The setup's cozy too: there's a working kitchen, two bedrooms right next to each other, living room or parlor or whatever the fuck the French call those salles, and a bathroom.

With a working toilet.

They passed by this place on their trek into Paris however long ago it was -- months now -- and he took notice of it then but never figured they'd be sticking around long-term enough to warrant a return trip. But now that it looks like they'll be here for a while, why the hell not? They have to live somewhere, and he'd just as soon it be a place where he can actually take off the damn cloak once in a while.

"I may just be a humble bounty hunter, ma'am, but I think I'm going in for a new career as a real estate agent." There's even a yard -- overgrown and its stone walls in need of a bunch of repair work -- where they could grow... uh... tobacco. Yeah, that's it. And fly off into the sunset in their personal spacecraft-built-for-three some day. "What do you think? Too far from the bright city lights?"

Shit, he could even smoke here... if he could get his hands on any cigs.

It's harder to sleep some nights than others. Tonight's one of them: the lights of Paris look so damn inviting, but he can't just get up and go for a walk, have a smoke, stroll by the Seine. There aren't any amazons here that he knows of, but the last damn thing he wants to do is put their group in any kind of danger. It's not just him. Hell, if it was, he'd say fuck it to danger and just do whatever the hell he wants to do. Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead, all that shit. But there are his Beths to consider, and in the grand scheme of things it's not some competition about who matters more or anything. It's just... they mean everything to him. Everything, and he's not about to get up and go off on his own right now. Even though it's been a long time since they found that church and went back to the bar -- back home -- he's not going anywhere without them. He knows what it's like to be separated from Beth and not be able to find her, and as much as he's in love with freedom and doing things his way, he's in love with her even more.

So tonight he just gets up quietly. The cloak's in his arms just in case he needs it real fast, and he sits where he can look out the window into the darkness, feet up on the window sill. Eventually he'll have to sleep, but for now sitting up's okay. As he looks out into the street, he lets his focus go soft: he's tired but restless. This is the kind of time when memories from long ago like to come back: things he hasn't thought about in... forever or longer.

Like when he was... twelve, and his parents made him see a shrink. His mom took him -- it was always her; his dad couldn't give him the time of day -- and when she dropped him off and said she'd be back later there were tears in her eyes, and how was that supposed to make him feel? Hell, he was only twelve, and he knew he was trouble but... none of his friends had to go for counseling. He didn't want it. He didn't need it. If his parents had just asked him what he wanted, he would have told them.

I just want you guys to like me.

But they never asked, and there he was. He doesn't remember the shrink's name; it feels like a whole fucking lifetime ago that he sat there and as the door closed, he felt really, really small, and there was this long silence. And in the long silence he felt even smaller, and then the shrink called him by his name -- his real name -- and asked him if he knew why he was there and he said yeah, because my parents don't want me.

There wasn't a whole hell of a lot the shrink could say about that, except to make some noise about breaking the patterns of the past.

In her little makeshift bed, Beth Junior whimpers against some dream or other. Beth stirs, but he's there first with a whispered I've got her. In the darkness of the Parisian night, he picks Junior up and moves back over to the spot by the window. She never really opens her eyes all the way; being in his arms settles her back down again and soon she's sleeping hard and content and she's so, so beautiful, and he can't imagine his own dad holding him this way, looking down on him with this overwhelming rush of absolute love like he has for Junior. He holds her and rocks her and leans down to give her forehead a kiss and then screw the noise, he tells her. It's still a whisper and she's just a little baby and she might not understand the words, but then again, she might.

"Beth Junior: I love you like crazy. Don't ever forget it."

For hours and hours he holds her as she sleeps, watching her with such gratitude. Whatever twist of fate's given him this opportunity, he'll take it. And it isn't until the sky starts shifting from black to purple to rose-gray that he sets Junior back down and climbs into what passes for his bed, careful to cover himself up with the cloak. As his eyes close, he thinks the night feels like... a minor victory.

Bounty hunter: one. Patterns of the past?

Zero.

The sounds are different and the smells are different and the language is different. By now he's used to only hearing female voices; he doesn't really miss the sound of other men but that's mostly because he hasn't had the luxury to miss a hell of a lot of anything. This has been the most perilous part of their travel, getting across the damn ocean, and he's glad they told Hero. Otherwise, it might have been pretty damn impossible.

But they're here, all of them, and it's been walk and ride the train and walk and ride the train and camp out and hide and all the usual shit all the way from Saint-Nazaire to Paris, but for the first time he can see landmarks in the distance. Hell, even a skinny green-haired martial-arts-geek unpopular combative kid growing up on Mars knows what the damn Eiffel Tower looks like.

They're almost there, and all those things he hasn't been letting himself think about are going to have to be thought about sooner than later now... if Yorick's actually still in Paris. That information is months old now, but it was all they had to go on and he knows from long years of tracking bounties that you've got to go with the information you have. Doesn't make any damn sense to do things any other way, and some leads pan out and others don't.

What matters most to him, though, is that they made it this far together. Junior's had such milestones, and there's a word that never once entered his vocabulary before the baby came along. But she can crawl like a champ and sit up by herself, and she's had solid food and damn, he wouldn't have missed this for the world. He can only imagine how much poorer his life would be without this wealth of experience, even though he's had to do it cloaked and from a distance.

Still, he's been there for it.

Stepping down from the overlook, he makes sure they're alone; Hero's been pretty damn good at keeping Natalya and Ciba out of their way at night and he owes her for that. Once he's sure they're alone, he lets that cloak hood drop back and the front fall open: he can breathe again. Turning to Beth, he speaks in the quietest low whisper.

"Look at that. These French women really have their shit together. They have electricity going and everything."

That hasn't often been the case.

The cloak thing is... really getting old. He can do it and keep on doing it, but it lost its appeal after the first couple days. Hell, half the time they've been out here it's just been the seven of them: if Hero and Ciba and Natalya had known about him, this would have been a different kind of trip. He wouldn't trade being here for anything, that's not it. It's just weird being a ghost, for all intents and purposes. And now the stakes are changing. Ever since they got to within about fifty miles of New York City, there's been a fuck of a lot of travel in absolute silence. Even the kids seem to know how serious things are; he's got a renewed respect for the little guys, not that he ever lost respect for Beth Junior. It's just he never thought a whole lot of kids in general. Now that he's seen how keyed-in they are to their parents' -- in this case their mothers' -- moods, he's pretty impressed.

There's shit going on, though, and not just around them. Being this isolated has given him a lot of time for thinking, and most of the thinking he's been doing hasn't necessarily left him feeling all warm and happy. They're almost at the harbor; the plan is to get passage on a ship for Europe and make their way to Paris. That... won't be an easy trip. It isn't like he'll have the simple luxury of any time alone with Beth and Junior; they'll probably all be crammed in some small space together. It's just a thing they're going to have to get through, unless he decides to jump ship and leave here and the only way he's going to do that is if someone shoots him. Tempers are starting to flare, and he can't do anything about that.

But damn, does he love his woman. He loves Beth so much. He told her a long time ago he'd die for her, and he would. Still, he gets this sick little feeling in his throat every time he thinks about the potential meetup with Yorick. Beth and Junior, they're his family. He's the one who's been there; he's the one who loves them. Yorick doesn't even know about the baby.

So what happens when the guy finds out?

Yeah, it's going to be a long trip across the Atlantic. A long trip thinking a lot of thoughts he'd rather not.

More than anything, he'd like to find a single damn door leading them home, but... the universe hasn't been that kind. Deep down inside, he's got the feeling it doesn't like him very much.

But when the opportunity arises to have a few minutes alone with Beth and Junior, he grabs it. Ciba's off with Natalya talking about what happens to Vlad when they finally get to Russia and Hero's off scouting the path; Junior's being fed. He almost doesn't dare take off the cloak here, but it's private enough so he can risk it for just a couple minutes. No one will see him. Resting a hand on Beth's shoulder, he looks down into Junior's contented face. She's such a beautiful kid, even if she doesn't happen to look a whole lot like Beth.

She sure looks nothing like him.

"Hey, Marie. Marie Browning. I remember you."

What he wouldn't give for Europa right now. Every day a honeymoon: that's sure as hell been put to the test.

Tom's cloak is fucking great... for ten minutes at a time but not for weeks: this whole thing is really damn hard. It's like he's there but not there. He knows Beth doesn't want him to leave her side much because she's worried about him and the fact they're still together through everything is more of a testament to how much they love each other than anything else, but... it's hard. It's hard to eat, because they're only worrying about food for four adults and one kid; lucky for them Beth's nursing Junior. It's hard to get clean or take a piss or even get a breath of fresh air, and he wishes Beth would at least tell Hero he's there. Hell, he'd tell all of them, explain how he got there, everything. Beth and Hero were heading for the bar the day the Israeli army showed up. Natalya and Ciba would've found out anyway if that was the case. If they knew, he could act as their advance scout. He could lift all the supplies they need. He could even be rear guard, making sure they're always safe: he'd be good at that. He'd be helpful that way.

But he promised Beth it could be her choice, and even when the cloak starts to feel a little bit like a straitjacket, he reminds himself this is her world and he's no more than an intruder. Well, an intruder who happens to love the hell out of one of its remaining women and hard though it is, it's infinitely preferable to sitting at the bar stewing. So far none of the doors they've opened have led anywhere but their expected locations, and if he hadn't chanced out here after Hero, there's no telling if he ever would have seen Beth and Junior again. The only time he really gets to have anything to do with her is in the middle of the night when Beth's on watch... and not even then, always. Sometimes, one of the other women is awake and then the only thing he can do is bite his tongue and shut the hell up.

One night while Beth slept, he stole away outside. They were in an abandoned convenience store that night, somewhere in Missouri, he thinks. The whole town was empty; he walked up the road a way and once he was damn sure no one was watching them, he slipped out of the cloak for a precious little bit and just breathed. He breathed, then changed into a fresh shirt and rolled up the old one and stuck it back in his pack. It got washed in secret the next time they camped out by a stream and he left it far away from the rest of the camp's laundry to dry out. Alone is one thing, but alone in a crowd is something else entirely. There haven't been any opportunities to work out, precious few opportunities to even talk to Beth for fear of being overheard.

Personally, he's ready to let Natalya and Ciba and Hero know. He's ready to be able to hold Junior for more than a few minutes while she's sleeping. He's ready to start contributing to this walk across the country and it's a really big country.

More than anything, though, he's ready to find a door that leads back home.

And that might never happen.

Earth has this look and feel and smell all its own: he remembers it well from the time he did with Doohan, the vacation he took with Beth. He sneaks through the shed door and just out of the way, cloak intact, as Hero takes a step forward then turns back to shut that door behind her. She stops for a moment and looks back and for a minute he thinks she sees him, but she doesn't. She's just lost in thought and he feels a little bit bad that he didn't tell her he was going to do this, but shit. That dream? It scared the crap out of him, and it was just dumb luck Hero picked today to come back for a visit.

Or maybe it was fate; he's always claimed to be a hell of a fatalistic guy and a hell of an opportunist and he wasn't going to let this opportunity pass. If Hero could walk across the damn country with a heavy backpack, he can follow her from this corn field to wherever it is they go wearing one and he can do it silently. Fortunately the corn husks rustle in the wind and he doesn't have to worry too much about making noise and that's good: he's trying to get his bearings and the stars look different here than they do on Mars. He has no fucking idea what direction's what, but it almost doesn't matter.

Click. Click. Click. Sometimes that fake eye is a hell of a good thing to have, and he's also got a damn good memory. Anyone who's been thrown out of as many casinos for counting cards as he's been ought to be able to memorize a damn path from a shed in a field to wherever Hero's going; he follows along breathing softly but only because he reminds himself to breathe. Good thing he can kind of sort of see through this cloak of Tom's.

His pack is full of things they might need: smokes and jerky and dried fruit and water, diapers and a few changes of clothes for the baby, a few sets of clothes for him. He figures shit like men's underwear won't be easy to come by out here, so if he's erred on the side of caution by packing a few extra of those, so be it; there are still some things he and Beth don't actually share. The heaviest thing in the pack is all that ammo. Beth keeps telling him it's too dangerous for him out here but a little danger never kept him from doing a single thing his whole damn life and it's not about to start now.

He trails Hero for what feels like a long time, but as soon as she stops and goes inside wherever it is they go in the middle of Kansas, he'll stop and take a breather. He won't risk smoking; he can go without. What he really needs to know is that Beth and the baby are okay. Eventually Hero moves quickly and quietly toward a silo and opens the door to the barn next to it. It looks just like any damn barn in any western: there's a loft up top and bales of hay everywhere. No livestock but he guesses they've long since died out, what with all the male mammals dropping dead and people needing food and all that shit. This barn though: it's mostly for show, because Hero moves through the front door to a hidden door in the corner; it closes behind her with a solid metallic thunk. He'll never be able to get in there, he bets, but after Hero's been gone about ten minutes, he has to give it a try. The door's solid as hell and he can't make it budge; he's great at sleight of hand but he's a lousy lock-picker and this lock... well, it doesn't much look like it wants to be picked.

There's not a hell of a lot to do except find a cozy corner of the barn, kick back in the hay, and wait. Even though he doesn't like waiting, he's pretty damn good at it.

And how 'bout that: he's still alive. Earth hasn't killed him yet.

That cloak Tom's loaned him: it's a hell of a thing. A hell of a powerful thing and while he's never really given a shit about power or having it, he's not always the best at turning away from temptation. He doesn't know shit about magic or how magic items work: all he knows is when Tom put that thing on, he just disappeared.

It's like he was never there.

He... kind of has to put it to the test, just to see how it works. Just to see if there's any way it doesn't work, because sitting around waiting? That really sucks. He's missed a whole fucking month of time with Beth and Beth Junior, and damn if he's going to be left behind to fend for himself again. Someone smart -- Annie, probably -- once told him that in order to change now, we have to understand the patterns of the past and make a concerted effort to break out of them. He got left behind once before, and he's not going to let it happen again. There's nothing wrong, he thinks, with a guy wanting his family enough to do whatever it takes to be with them. And hell, if Beth can visit him, why can't he just visit her? Twice as often is twice as good; Door as much as offered to open onto her world for him if he needs it.

No reason not to take her up on it. Just a couple times, just till things settle down and Beth and Junior can come back home.

Inside, there's a hell of a lot more going on but it's not the kind of shit he's going to share with anybody. It all has to do with the damn past, and all the feelings that get stirred up every time he watches Beth take Junior out that door with her and he doesn't get to go with them. Old shit comes back. Old feelings of not being worth someone's time, of not being worth loving, of not being worth sticking around for and he knows the situation's different. Beth isn't Julia. She never was. Her reasons for going are entirely different. But that old wounded part of him can't quite seem to let go enough to reconcile that.

He's not very proud of that, but he can't help it. He's tried: he just can't.

Slipping that cloak over his body, he moves unseen through the House of Arch and into the bar proper. It's crowded -- it always is -- but if he holds the fabric close around himself, he can move between people without bumping into them and the one time he does, the guy whose arm he bumps looks right through him, shrugs, and forgets about it. This thing is... almost dangerous, it works so well. But it's just a tool, just a means to an end. So it works inside: time to test it outside, see how it runs, see if there are any concerns about it then. The thing is long and he's worried about his feet being seen if he has to move in it fast, but again if he holds it around himself, it seems to work. He runs right past a couple people walking around the lake and although they hear his approaching footsteps and automatically move out of the way, they still don't seem to see him: the girl turns to the guy and asks if he heard something, but he just shrugs and pick up their conversation right where it left off.

It's pretty fucking amazing: this thing will work. If what Beth's most worried about is him being seen, she can leave that worry at home. It's a way he can be with her and not cause some big damn upset to the delicate balance of her world, or at least it should work that way.

Back home again, he tests one more theory: he takes his big travel backpack and stuffs it with pillows and puts it over his back. He takes his artillery pack and puts it around his waist, and loads up with as much crap as he can, even simulating carrying a baby. Then he tries the cloak again and when he looks in the mirror -- mirrors have never been his best friend -- he can't see a damn thing, even though when the cloak drops from around his body he's the size of two men.

Hell yeah: it's time to get a travel pack prepared.

As the days go by, they take on a sameness: he wakes up alone, he moves through the day oblivious to other people, he eats alone, he sleeps alone. It's nothing he's not used to but it doesn't mean he likes it. It really... kind of sucks.

A lot.

But if it's what Beth needs to do, he can do it. Even if it's taking longer than he hoped.

She'll be back. She said she would. He just... well, yeah. Everyone knows how he feels. He misses them. It reminds him in some ways of when Julia first disappeared, and he held this burning flame of hope in his heart that any moment now, he'd open his eyes and she'd be there. Looking at him from around a corner, or sitting by the side of the bed when he woke up, or on the other end of the phone, or down the block walking toward him. It's just that she never did, and that was then and this is different.

Because there really isn't any other choice -- a lot like then -- he can wait.

In the meantime, his feet are up on the coffee table and he's got a glass of water and a pack of cigarettes and he's reading. He hasn't read this much since he was on the Bebop, and that's both good and bad. It draws his mind away from things for a while, but he's distracted. His eyes can't really focus on the words on the page, even though the book he's reading on the history of personal spacecraft in the 2050s is a little bit interesting. He's read it before, but not for a long time.

Fuck it: setting it aside, he disappears into the bedroom for a minute, reemerging from the portrait into the living room with a box in his hand. Inside are a bunch of interlocking blocks -- Legos, he thinks they're called -- that he got from Bar a few days ago when he asked her idly for something to take his mind off things. Clearing the coffee table, he sets his cigarette into the ashtray and starts building. When he's done, the blocks are going to be shaped into that house on Venus they've never had a chance to buy.