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Curious how time stands so fucking still inside these elevators. Every inch the thing rises seems like an hour; every floor takes a year.
It gives him plenty of time to think, and not about the red washing into and over his left eye, or the blood seeping through his clothes, his coat, down his left arm, onto his left hand which is, for all intents and purposes, frozen around an invisible Barak. Yeah, those muscles aren't working. Nothing he can do about it anyway, not right now. (Beth told me I have good hands. I wonder if she'll say the same thing if only one of them works?)
He doesn't remember this at all from last time. He stopped remembering anything that happened the moment Shin stepped out of the elevator and saved his sorry ass. Or at least he stopped remembering anything in detail; it's all just a blur. He sure as fuck doesn't remember this ride being so endless. The bell heralds the fifteenth floor.
(When I was fifteen, I started with the Dragons.)
Breathe, breathe, breathe. It's not as easy as it was. Neither is seeing.
(blink blink blink blink)
Sixteenth floor.
(Killed my first guy at sixteen, how many have I killed tonight?)
He's not keeping track.
Seventeenth floor.
(Got my pilot's license at seventeen, got the Swordfish, worked with Doohan.)
Eighteenth floor: Fuck this, I'm not going to die. I refuse to let this elevator force me to relive my damn past like some cliche, some right-before-you-die thing. There are only two things on his mind: get to Vicious and end things there, then get the hell back to Beth.
(Please be sitting there at the bar or in Room 8 or Room 31 all pissed off at me for disappearing, Slim. Please be there. Don't you dare be anywhere else in the whole damn universe. Don't. Fucking. Leave. Me. All. Alone.)
Next train, next shuttle, next door, next... dream: whatever it fucking takes. One way or another, he's going back to her. Whether or not she's there waiting, well... he can't control that.
But he can sure as hell hope.
And breathe, and reload his gun (I'll make it back to you if it's the last damn thing I do).
A guy has to have faith in something. Might as well be love.
Nineteenth, twentieth, twenty-first, twenty-second floor: top level, this is it. That door takes fucking forever to open and at the same time it opens way too fucking fast: gun drawn, he looks right. Looks left: no one's here. Vicious sure as hell is predictably self-confident.
He's also down at the end of the hall: Spike knows this place. He knows the layout. He visited Mao in this top-floor suite too many times not to know exactly where Vicious is and what he's doing... like he can smell it. All he has going for him is the element of surprise and sheer nerve; the corridor feels endless as he runs down it to the end.
He hopes like hell that beyond that door, there's a path back to Beth.
He also knows that Vicious can tell he's nearby. Or that at least he's expected: it's the only reason he had Annie killed and it's the only reason he had Julia killed. Bait, lives reduced to bait, to a trap. He'll sure as fuck make sure Vicious pays for what he did to both of them, and he'll do it without sympathy and he'll do it to get things finished because last time he did this, it brought him to his angel and he hopes like hell this time does, too. If it doesn't... well, he guesses he won't know that it never worked. Life's funny that way.
When Mao ran the Syndicate, this room -- his private room where he'd take only the most important audiences -- was done up in sumptuous red and gold, the luckiest colors according to Chinese superstition. All shades of red, too: maroons and scarlets and mauves. Deep and bright, shiny and matte. It was gorgeous. But since Vicious killed him, the room has to have gone to seed. It was Mao's baby, just like on the Bebop it's the bonsais that are Jet's babies and so Spike doesn't really feel all that damn bad when he pushes the door open and throws in the last and most powerful of his grenades. Even out in the hallway the kickback from that explosion is something; he can't even blink all the blood out of his left eye any more. The wound's too fresh, bleeding too much but there, he can see enough.
Vicious. At the top of the stairs under open sky and Spike thinks hey, how about that, I took out the whole damn ceiling and roof. Not bad. Sorry, Mao, but that one's for you, I had a debt to pay.
He walks forward slowly; he doesn't need to make his presence a secret. The grenade blast sure as hell gave him away anyhow, and there's a moment's silence when Vicious just looks down and Spike... well, he just waits, his heart skipping every other beat, it seems, inside his chest.
"So, you're finally awake. I told you before, Spike: I'm the only one who can kill you and set you free." Vicious's voice, cold as ice, sounds really fucking far away.
But Spike just smiles: there's something way too familiar about what he's hearing, like the memory of a dream he thought had vanished for good a long time ago. "Those words apply to you as well, Vicious. Either way, it's going to end here." Vision blurring in and out, he raises his gun and fires a single shot.
Bang.
There, your personal invitation to this party. He runs across the room and up those steps as fast as he fucking can, four, five, eight, a dozen steps; he didn't know Vicious had a damn throwing knife. Fuck! He catches it in the left shoulder, right beside his collarbone, right near where he got shot that time with Beth.
Beth Beth Beth Beth
He focuses, Bruce Lee's words somewhere in his consciousness: self-expression is total, immediate, without conception of time, and you can only express that if you are free, physically and mentally, from fragmentation. The moment that knife bites into him, he does it: divests himself of all of it. Beth, Junior: I'll be back. I'll be back. Now I need to be here. Rolling forward, he stands and fires but misses; in that moment he feels the hilt of Vicious's katana right in the back.
Vicious 2, Spike 0. So far; Spike spins around as steel meets steel: katana against gun and they're maybe a foot apart. The only thing keeping the katana at bay is his gun and for the first time, he's face to face with Vicious and
Bang.
the bullet sends blood from Vicious's shoulder flying, spreading everywhere but rage is the stronger emotion; slashing out, the katana slices into Spike's left leg (fuck!) just above the knee (trade you: gunshot for knife wound) and Vicious leans back, swinging wide. It's a move designed to behead the opponent and Spike knows it only too well: he and Vicious were sparring partners for years. Once again, his gun's the only thing stopping the katana; both weapons meet and then clatter to the floor. He comes up with the katana; Vicious steps on the gun.
Enough: time to get this over with. "Julia is dead." That's all Vicious gets to hear: he doesn't ever fucking get to hear about Beth or about any of the rest of it. "Let's finish it now."
"As you wish." There's a long fucking silence punctuated only by the sliding of weapons across the floor: katana to Vicious, Jericho to Spike. In a flash Vicious swings, catching Spike in the ribs but...
Ten years ago, we used to spar all the damn time, remember, Vicious? Remember that? I told you then: swords are good, but they're all show. Guns are faster.
Bang.
And then time stands completely, utterly still, frozen for everything but the racing of his heart. Vicious falls forward with a look of utter hatred on his face
(glad I know where we really stand, pal)
and doesn't move again.
The only sound is the wind whistling through steel girders, all that's left of the ceiling. When he looks up, he sees Julia bathed in white, hears those dying words on her lips.
It's all a... dream.
Yeah, just a dream.
Breathe, breathe, breathe.
This part of it, anyway. Just a bad dream.
Blink, blink.
He moves that useless left hand over to his right side to test one thing: sure as shit, he was right.
Beth's going to fucking kill me: I promised her I wouldn't break these ribs again.
Limping slowly down the steps, each movement a measured slice of agony, he reaches for the door.
It gives him plenty of time to think, and not about the red washing into and over his left eye, or the blood seeping through his clothes, his coat, down his left arm, onto his left hand which is, for all intents and purposes, frozen around an invisible Barak. Yeah, those muscles aren't working. Nothing he can do about it anyway, not right now. (Beth told me I have good hands. I wonder if she'll say the same thing if only one of them works?)
He doesn't remember this at all from last time. He stopped remembering anything that happened the moment Shin stepped out of the elevator and saved his sorry ass. Or at least he stopped remembering anything in detail; it's all just a blur. He sure as fuck doesn't remember this ride being so endless. The bell heralds the fifteenth floor.
(When I was fifteen, I started with the Dragons.)
Breathe, breathe, breathe. It's not as easy as it was. Neither is seeing.
(blink blink blink blink)
Sixteenth floor.
(Killed my first guy at sixteen, how many have I killed tonight?)
He's not keeping track.
Seventeenth floor.
(Got my pilot's license at seventeen, got the Swordfish, worked with Doohan.)
Eighteenth floor: Fuck this, I'm not going to die. I refuse to let this elevator force me to relive my damn past like some cliche, some right-before-you-die thing. There are only two things on his mind: get to Vicious and end things there, then get the hell back to Beth.
(Please be sitting there at the bar or in Room 8 or Room 31 all pissed off at me for disappearing, Slim. Please be there. Don't you dare be anywhere else in the whole damn universe. Don't. Fucking. Leave. Me. All. Alone.)
Next train, next shuttle, next door, next... dream: whatever it fucking takes. One way or another, he's going back to her. Whether or not she's there waiting, well... he can't control that.
But he can sure as hell hope.
And breathe, and reload his gun (I'll make it back to you if it's the last damn thing I do).
A guy has to have faith in something. Might as well be love.
Nineteenth, twentieth, twenty-first, twenty-second floor: top level, this is it. That door takes fucking forever to open and at the same time it opens way too fucking fast: gun drawn, he looks right. Looks left: no one's here. Vicious sure as hell is predictably self-confident.
He's also down at the end of the hall: Spike knows this place. He knows the layout. He visited Mao in this top-floor suite too many times not to know exactly where Vicious is and what he's doing... like he can smell it. All he has going for him is the element of surprise and sheer nerve; the corridor feels endless as he runs down it to the end.
He hopes like hell that beyond that door, there's a path back to Beth.
He also knows that Vicious can tell he's nearby. Or that at least he's expected: it's the only reason he had Annie killed and it's the only reason he had Julia killed. Bait, lives reduced to bait, to a trap. He'll sure as fuck make sure Vicious pays for what he did to both of them, and he'll do it without sympathy and he'll do it to get things finished because last time he did this, it brought him to his angel and he hopes like hell this time does, too. If it doesn't... well, he guesses he won't know that it never worked. Life's funny that way.
When Mao ran the Syndicate, this room -- his private room where he'd take only the most important audiences -- was done up in sumptuous red and gold, the luckiest colors according to Chinese superstition. All shades of red, too: maroons and scarlets and mauves. Deep and bright, shiny and matte. It was gorgeous. But since Vicious killed him, the room has to have gone to seed. It was Mao's baby, just like on the Bebop it's the bonsais that are Jet's babies and so Spike doesn't really feel all that damn bad when he pushes the door open and throws in the last and most powerful of his grenades. Even out in the hallway the kickback from that explosion is something; he can't even blink all the blood out of his left eye any more. The wound's too fresh, bleeding too much but there, he can see enough.
Vicious. At the top of the stairs under open sky and Spike thinks hey, how about that, I took out the whole damn ceiling and roof. Not bad. Sorry, Mao, but that one's for you, I had a debt to pay.
He walks forward slowly; he doesn't need to make his presence a secret. The grenade blast sure as hell gave him away anyhow, and there's a moment's silence when Vicious just looks down and Spike... well, he just waits, his heart skipping every other beat, it seems, inside his chest.
"So, you're finally awake. I told you before, Spike: I'm the only one who can kill you and set you free." Vicious's voice, cold as ice, sounds really fucking far away.
But Spike just smiles: there's something way too familiar about what he's hearing, like the memory of a dream he thought had vanished for good a long time ago. "Those words apply to you as well, Vicious. Either way, it's going to end here." Vision blurring in and out, he raises his gun and fires a single shot.
Bang.
There, your personal invitation to this party. He runs across the room and up those steps as fast as he fucking can, four, five, eight, a dozen steps; he didn't know Vicious had a damn throwing knife. Fuck! He catches it in the left shoulder, right beside his collarbone, right near where he got shot that time with Beth.
Beth Beth Beth Beth
He focuses, Bruce Lee's words somewhere in his consciousness: self-expression is total, immediate, without conception of time, and you can only express that if you are free, physically and mentally, from fragmentation. The moment that knife bites into him, he does it: divests himself of all of it. Beth, Junior: I'll be back. I'll be back. Now I need to be here. Rolling forward, he stands and fires but misses; in that moment he feels the hilt of Vicious's katana right in the back.
Vicious 2, Spike 0. So far; Spike spins around as steel meets steel: katana against gun and they're maybe a foot apart. The only thing keeping the katana at bay is his gun and for the first time, he's face to face with Vicious and
Bang.
the bullet sends blood from Vicious's shoulder flying, spreading everywhere but rage is the stronger emotion; slashing out, the katana slices into Spike's left leg (fuck!) just above the knee (trade you: gunshot for knife wound) and Vicious leans back, swinging wide. It's a move designed to behead the opponent and Spike knows it only too well: he and Vicious were sparring partners for years. Once again, his gun's the only thing stopping the katana; both weapons meet and then clatter to the floor. He comes up with the katana; Vicious steps on the gun.
Enough: time to get this over with. "Julia is dead." That's all Vicious gets to hear: he doesn't ever fucking get to hear about Beth or about any of the rest of it. "Let's finish it now."
"As you wish." There's a long fucking silence punctuated only by the sliding of weapons across the floor: katana to Vicious, Jericho to Spike. In a flash Vicious swings, catching Spike in the ribs but...
Ten years ago, we used to spar all the damn time, remember, Vicious? Remember that? I told you then: swords are good, but they're all show. Guns are faster.
Bang.
And then time stands completely, utterly still, frozen for everything but the racing of his heart. Vicious falls forward with a look of utter hatred on his face
(glad I know where we really stand, pal)
and doesn't move again.
The only sound is the wind whistling through steel girders, all that's left of the ceiling. When he looks up, he sees Julia bathed in white, hears those dying words on her lips.
It's all a... dream.
Yeah, just a dream.
Breathe, breathe, breathe.
This part of it, anyway. Just a bad dream.
Blink, blink.
He moves that useless left hand over to his right side to test one thing: sure as shit, he was right.
Beth's going to fucking kill me: I promised her I wouldn't break these ribs again.
Limping slowly down the steps, each movement a measured slice of agony, he reaches for the door.
