Cowboy Bebop Fan Fiction ❯ Yesterdays' Papers ❯ One-Shot

[ P - Pre-Teen ]

Author's Note:

Cowboy Bebop is not owned by me, but by a bunch of people who are _way_ more talented than me. I'm just a really big fan who likes to write stories.
Also on the list of things I don't own is the song "Yesterdays' Papers", the Rolling Stones own it; which is quite cool really, since a lot of the actual Bebop episodes are named after Rolling Stones songs. =^_^=




Yesterdays' Papers
LH-chan '02


The images play across the video screen on the bridge of the Bebop, washing over Jet's features as he watches them...still as a statue. Just the same, as he's been since they started...days ago....
"Assault on Red Dragon headquarters..." they say. "Body count rising...early reports suggest the work of only one man...no survivors...."

Three days later...still no survivors....

Any Red Dragons who could run, would have, the moment the authorities showed up.

But...Spike....

The reporters won't say he's been found alive...not now. I know it...Jet knows it...but he's still hoping....

I know what Jet's thinking. We haven't really spoken, not since Spike...left; but he must be thinking the same thing as me....
If only we'd done something...different. If we could have just stopped him from leaving....

It's not true. I know it...so does he.

Nothing would have stopped him.

Even if I'd shot him in the corridor.... He'd have gone after Vicious another day.

I watched the news with Jet, for a while. I can't stand it anymore...the endless repetition of things I don't want to hear.

At least, while he's watching, I can slip past him. Unnoticed in the dim light of the video screen that serves as the only illumination on the bridge, to my room.... The only place aboard this ship that doesn't remind me of Spike.

The common room is unbearable...I can't look at that old yellow couch without seeing him: Sprawled out and sleeping. Hanging his head over the backrest as he complains about the food. Injured, and bandaged like a mummy.

Damn it! When did I start caring about him so much?


The memories are fewer here; at least...I don't think he ever came into this room while it was mine. I don't expect to see him here.

For a moment; I can pretend that he's not really gone.

Then cruel reality returns, and I can't pretend anymore.

I can only remember...but I suppose that's what I came in here to do.

Resigned, I free my little box from its hiding place, wrapped in my sweatshirt. My secret little box that no one but me has ever seen.
For years, I've kept it hidden behind the pilot seat of my Redtail, when it wasn't in my hands; so I'll always have it with me...no matter how fast I have to run.

It doesn't hold money, or weapons, or anything valuable to anyone...but me. Just a few little books. My journals.
I've kept a journal almost since the day I woke up in the cryo-clinic. Actually, it was Whitney Hagas Matsumoto who bought the first one for me.

Back when I thought he loved me.

Before I knew he was just a con-man.

I wanted a place where I could keep my new memories--in case I lost them again--and I didn't want to trust a computer. A computer lost my memories in the first place.

He bought me a little book...one with tiny winged hearts on the cover.
"A valentine for Miss Valentine," he'd said.

It wasn't even Valentine's Day.


That isn't the one I'm looking for. The one I want is right on top...bound in blue leather that still looks new...the journal I started right after I first came to the Bebop.
Everything that's happened to me here is in these pages: Small-fry bounties, and big, dangerous, ones; crash landing in the middle of nowhere. Going for days with nothing to eat; or having plenty, but only in the form of hundreds of shitake mushrooms, year-expired rations, or lobsters that could eat us back...other meetings with Vicious...and those who knew him.
The days when I finally got my old memories back are here too.... The shuttle accident...the ruins of my old house...destroyed long ago.

I haven't written...not since I met Julia. Not since I was caught in the rush of events that led up to now.

For the first time since I started keeping a journal, I don't want to put what's happened into words.

I am being like Jet...trying not to know the truth. Trying not to let what we had here fall apart...like so many other things.

Hot tears gather in the corners of my eyes. I won't let myself cry again!

When did I get so damn sentimental?

When did this place start feeling like home?

When did these strangers start feeling like family?


My gaze falls to the little blue book, lying open in my lap...open to one of the center pages.
The day Whitney Hagas Matsumoto reappeared in my life.
The day I told Spike about my forgotten past, without meaning to.

I think I was starting to feel at home here then. After I ran away, and Jet came looking for me. After he let me come back...let me stay here, even though I robbed him and ran.

And at the bottom of the page...something Spike told me that day.

He said that the past doesn't really matter.

At the time, I told him he thought that way because he had a past.

He told me, that no matter the past, I still had a future.

I didn't understand, then. I didn't know enough about him to understand.
I didn't realize what it would have meant for him...to not know where he came from...to be fifty years removed from his past, without an inkling of what had been.

It would have changed his future.

He would have had a future.

I understand now...I wish I could tell him....


..................


It's a bittersweet ending Space Cowboy....