Work Text:
Judas by Esperanza Spalding
—
Judas, you know the lonesome road, don’t you?
Collecting bottle caps of rum
Honest sinning to chase the blues
Blurrier till kingdom comes
The jarring thing about seeing the past in one eye and the present in the other is that it can sometimes be hard to tell them apart. When Spike wakes up to the sound of someone else’s breath just beside him, he knows who is lying in his bed, but not when.
It could be just after the first night Vicious appeared in his doorway. They were thirteen and Spike was crashing at Mao’s as he did intermittently when the Martian nights got too cold to sleep outside. He had been half-asleep but startled awake at the stark fear in Vicious’ eyes—an emotion he’d thought Vicious was incapable of. Acting on instinct, Spike just moved over to make room in his bed and Vicious stayed until just before sunrise.
Before he slipped out like a shadow disappearing before the dawn, that next morning had been just like this morning—soft, even breathing and the electric awareness of Vicious’ presence, which Spike had always been able to sense, from the first moment they met.
It could be that first morning or any of a hundred mornings after, waking up to find Vicious turned away from him, pressed all the way to the edge of the bed, his body barely less tense in sleep than awake.
Except that he hears a soft clank, the thrumming of a spaceship engine beneath their feet, and remembers where he is, when he is.
“Wake up, lazy ass,” Spike says, slitting open his eyes and gently shoving Vicious in the shoulder.
A long fingered hand grabs his wrist, twisting it just to the point of discomfort. Vicious is an artist at such things; the body is his canvas and his medium, of course, is pain. It was one of the reasons he rose so quickly in the syndicate—his finesse and lack of squeamishness.
“Good morning,” Vicious says. His mouth twists with something like fondness before he releases Spike and slips out of bed.
—
Take a little boy who gets to see his papa broke down / Now he’s a shadow made for the modern world
—
Spike and Vicious exchange a glance as Vicious sets his Raptor down on a lot near the coordinates Jet gave them before heading out this morning. Of course Vicious would fly the newest model of a top-end line of ships; only the best for the syndicate’s most dangerous enforcer.
They don’t need to say anything, but Spike knows they’re thinking the same thing.
How strange it is to be back here.
The syndicate has moved out of this area, migrating its operations to more upscale neighborhoods as it grew in stature and wealth. That doesn’t mean these slums aren’t dangerous, but Spike and Vicious can move through them without fear of drawing attention to the fact that they aren’t actually dead.
As they walk along streets that lack sidewalks, riddled with potholes, Spike’s left eye renders for him the neighborhood as it was in his childhood. The convenience store that sold staples like cheap ramen and canned soup, where he would spend stolen woolongs to buy dinner for himself and his siblings when his father failed to put anything on the table.
“Look at that,” he says, pausing to point to a back alley that leads to a splintered, sagging shack. “Before Mao gave me a place to crash I used to sleep there sometimes.”
Vicious glances at the wretched structure, no pity or sympathy in his eyes.
“I can’t believe it’s still standing,” Spike says, and continues down the sidewalk, Vicious by his side. That, too, is like old times.
“There,” Vicious says, pointing to a cheap motel. The sign out front reads “Palm Inn” and has a picture of a swaying palm tree over a lagoon. “Do you remember?”
Spike’s left eye sees two boys, one dark-haired, one light, climbing nimbly up the railings and landing easily on the balcony to a room on the third floor. Through the sliding glass door—the lock on which is easily picked—they slip into a rarely used syndicate safe house. It’s their hideout, a secret haven that no one else knows.
“Vicious.” Spike was idly disassembling one of the many guns that were stored in the closet of the repurposed hotel room. “Do you think I’m too soft?”
He didn’t look at Vicious, because he was afraid to see the answer. Mao’s disapproving face was imprinted on his mind. He was sixteen, not yet at the age where he would rebel against everything that had ever been imposed on him, but on the cusp. Waiting for the catalyst.
“No,” Vicious said, without hesitating. “You are who you are. Don’t change it. Not for anyone.”
“Okay,” Spike said, raising his head to meet Vicious’ gaze. “I won’t.”
“Of course I remember,” Spike says. “We spent a lot of time there.”
“We did.” Vicious moves on, and Spike moves with him.
They follow Jet’s poorly drawn map through a maze of seedy back alleys, and Spike’s unease grows with every step, until they are standing before the house he grew up in, the house that was his home until he ran away at twelve years old, determined to make his own way.
The door is wide open, and he can hear Jet’s voice from inside. He takes a deep breath and hurries toward the sound.
Frank Spiegel is sitting on the couch in an undershirt and slacks, a bowl of half-finished noodles overturned on the carpet. Jet has him at gunpoint, and Faye is snapping a pair of handcuffs around his wrists when he catches sight of his long lost son.
“Spike,” he says, stumbling to his feet with his hands bound. “My boy! Sure am glad to see you, son.”
Spike goes still, memories washing over him in fragments and shards.
—His mother’s voice, pleading: “Please Frank, don’t! He’s only a boy. He’ll learn to be better.” But her pleas and the mercy they brought stopped after her funeral.
—Hunger, the crying of his siblings. “Where’s Dad?” “What’s for dinner?” “I miss Mommy.”
—The slam of the door behind him and the weight of a backpack on his shoulders as he left for good, never looking back at the father bellowing his name.
While Spike is paralyzed by the onslaught of past, Vicious steps forward with his usual predator’s grace and punches Frank hard enough to send him flying back onto the couch.
“I won’t kill you,” Vicious says, a little knife already glinting in his hand, “because we need the bounty money. But that doesn’t mean you have to be fully intact.”
“Spike,” Frank says thickly, his lip already beginning to swell. “Help me out here.” His eyes dart wildly to Vicious. “What the fuck is wrong with this guy?”
“Is this your dad ?” Faye asks incredulously. Like she never expected Spike to have anything as mundane as a father.
“Hey now, take it easy,” Jet says, grabbing Vicious’ wrist and holding him back.
“I can’t believe you have a bounty on your head,” Spike finally says, though the truth is that he’s not too surprised. Frank has always been a gambler, and his debts are finally starting to catch up with him. “Hey, Vicious, calm down, okay?”
Vicious shoots Frank a final murderous glance, then relents.
“It’s not a big deal, Vish. He hits everybody. This time I didn’t even have to go to the hospital.” Spike, sitting in their hideout with a bag of ice pressed to his eye, wonders why Vicious looks so angry.
“So, how about getting me out of these handcuffs?” Frank asks. “Can you help your old man out with a little cash, Spike?”
Spike takes one final look at him, turns on his heel, and walks out.
—
But if you ask my advice / Their island cage / Can’t hold the rising sea, of rage
—
Spike isn’t at the bar for long before Vicious finds him. He sits beside him and Spike doesn’t have the energy to do much more than mutter, “Go fuck yourself, Vicious. Leave me alone.”
But Vicious doesn’t leave. He orders two shots of a strong, cheap mezcal, the kind of thing they used to drink when they were just starting in the Red Dragon, and when the bartender pours them, Vicious tells him to leave the bottle.
“Do you remember when we went to Tijuana?” Vicious asks, after throwing back his shot. The strong alcohol doesn’t make his voice any more gravelly than usual.
Spike nods, his left eye rendering the moment for him in perfect clarity. The memory isn’t a bad one, for once.
An upscale club on the corner of 13th Street in Tijuana. The two of them in a back booth, Vicious flushed with cash after a recent job and happier than usual to spend it. The girl in Spike’s lap, long blonde hair. When Spike looked up from that glorious pair of breasts, Vicious was watching him with an intensity that knocked the breath from his chest.
“I’d never seen you get drunk before,” Spike says.
“And you haven’t since,” Vicious says, pouring another shot. For a guy who almost never drinks, he seems to have a decent tolerance. “Mao sent me on a job, to kill a man who couldn’t pay his debts. It had been so many years—I didn’t recognize him at first. But when I heard his voice, I remembered.”
Spike glances at him. “Your dad?”
Vicious nods.
“And you killed him.” It isn’t a question. “Then you took me to Tijuana to get drunk.”
“Yes.”
They sit in silence for a while, downing another shot of mezcal without bothering to toast. It’s comfortable, just like it used to be.
Spike sighs, stretches, and then leans forward for the bowl of peanuts on the bar, slipping his left hand into Vicious’ coat pocket as he does—acting out of curiosity and boredom, nothing more. He used to do it all the time, one of the countless little ways they were constantly competing. If Spike could pick Vicious’ pocket, he won. If Vicious caught him, he lost. Back then, pitting his skill against Vicious’ was a game, not, as it would be in the light falling through that glorious stained glass window, a contest of blood and desperation.
He expects to find something of Julia’s in the pocket of that high collared black coat, and is surprised when the shiny object he swipes is actually Mao’s. It’s his clan pendant, a small golden disc with a curled dragon engraved on it, strung through a chain so Mao could wear it around his neck. The edge, where the dragon’s feet rest against the rim, is stained with blood.
By the time Spike left the syndicate, he and Mao had become so estranged over his lack of ambition and his increasing unwillingness to follow orders that he’d barely noticed Mao’s absence from his life. When he heard about Mao’s death, he felt—to his shame—more anger for Vicious than grief for the man who took them both in and made them what they were.
“Are you still angry?” Vicious asks.
Spike shrugs, tucking the pendant into his own pocket. “I should be. Why did you have to kill him, Vicious? I know the two of you never got along, but you didn’t have to kill him.”
“There were rumors,” Vicious says. “That you were alive. I had to know.”
Spike stares at him. “You killed Mao to find me?”
“There were other reasons too. I would have done it eventually regardless.”
“I don’t get you, Vicious,” Spike says. “It used to be I thought I knew you better than anyone. But now—”
“You have never known me,” Vicious says, with a surprising amount of venom.
Spike sighs, leaning his head against his arms where they’re resting on the bar. “Why couldn’t you just let her go?”
“You think this is about Julia?” Vicious laughs, but there’s no humor in it.
“You love her.”
“I don’t.”
Spike sits up. He’s a little drunk, but he can still see and shoot straight, and he’d understand what Vicious is telling him, if Vicious would only start making some fucking sense.
“Then why?” he asks. “Why give her a gun and tell her to kill me? Why send your men to that graveyard to stop me? Why couldn’t you just let me go?”
“You really want to know?” Vicious’ lip curls in a snarl, and he grabs Spike by the collar, jerking him closer. “This is why,” he growls, and presses his mouth against Spike’s.
He’s rough and ferocious in the same way he is when he has his katana drawn, and Spike is kissing him back before his brain catches up, opening his mouth to the invasion and letting Vicious lick his way inside.
And then Vicious lets him go, grabs his sword, and walks out. Vraska caws softly, then takes off after him.
—
It’s only a matter of time, honey / Good money / Made on the street / He’s not evil
—
Spike found it hard to believe that the man with the kindly eyes was really a capo in the Red Dragon. He knew plenty about the Red Dragon—anyone who lived in the slums on Mars did, and especially street kids like him. He was drifting; hadn’t slept at home in a couple of months, but still hadn’t strayed far from his old neighborhood.
He liked to leave a few woolongs for his oldest sister, when he could get his hands on any, but he slipped into his father’s house and out again without being seen. He was done with all that. At twelve years old, he’d decided it was time to make his own way.
When he found the warehouse on C Street, he’d thought it was a pretty big score until he discovered he’d been stealing from the Red Dragon. A couple of thugs with guns dragged him to this guy—”Call me Mao, everybody does,”—who listened to both sides of the story, then gave Spike a kindly smile and told him fate was starting to show her hand.
“I saved your life,” Mao was saying, guiding Spike through the large compound. Spike stared at the exotic flowers growing on the lawns, the bright buildings with large, unbroken windows. It was like nowhere he’d ever been before.
“Thanks,” Spike said, scuffing his foot on the cobblestone path.
“Thanks is all well and good, but now you owe me,” Mao said. “Now you owe the Red Dragon.”
“I don’t got any woolongs,” Spike huffed.
“You don’t have any woolongs,” Mao gently corrected. “And I know that, Spike. What I want from you is much more valuable than woolongs. I want you to train, and learn, and serve me in the Red Dragon. Will you do that?”
Spike glanced at Mao, a sullen retort on his lips. But it died as he took in the weathered face regarding him with a friendly smile. Later, he would realize that Mao was just as dangerous as the rest of them, that his appearance and mannerisms were calculated to throw his opponents off guard. Mao was the one who had taught Vicious to be ruthless, who had taken what cruelty was already in Vicious’ heart and leveraged it for his own purposes.
But back then, Spike knew only that Mao was kind to him in a world sorely lacking kindness. So he nodded and gave his promise, only to break it in a graveyard in the rain not twenty years later.
At the far end of the compound was a dojo. Mao opened the sliding door and led Spike inside. There was a boy his age, tall and skinny with gray hair that fell into his eyes as he moved. He had a katana in his hand and was moving through the steps of a kata with an uncanny quickness.
“My apologies for interrupting,” Mao said.
The boy paused, turning to them and lowering his sword. He bowed to Mao and then his eyes landed on Spike, bright and curious.
“I found our warehouse thief,” Mao said, his hand on Spike’s shoulder, a steady, warm weight. Spike wanted to lean into Mao’s solid presence, to trust and hope, but stopped himself.
“Do you want me to kill him?” the boy asked. He didn’t look eager, just bored and maybe a little puzzled, but he meant it, and Spike knew without a doubt that this boy, despite his age, had killed before on Mao’s orders. Something in him became tense and wary, but something else, darker and a little twisted, sat up, intrigued.
So Spike just raised his eyebrows at the boy, a playful challenge. He reached into his pocket and took out the cigarette he’d stolen from the syndicate thug who had dragged him to Mao’s chamber.
“Give it your best shot,” he said to the boy. “Whatever happens, happens.”
Mao, who was watching the entire exchange with his canny, perceptive eyes, deftly plucked the cigarette from Spike’s mouth. “There’s no smoking here,” he said. “Vicious, this is Spike. He’s going to be staying here for a little while and training with you.”
“I see.” Vicious sheathed the katana with a soft click. He sounded mostly indifferent.
“We’ll be friends,” Spike said, standing straight. He wasn’t sure what drove him to make the pronouncement, but he could tell it would come true.
—
You either love him or you leave him / You either love him or you leave him / Are you a lover or a leaver? / Are you a lover or a leaver?
—
Vicious is waiting inside Spike’s quarters on the Bebop, polishing his katana at the tiny metal desk in the corner. He sheaths it and stands as soon as he sees Spike enter.
“Hey,” Spike says. He wonders if the air between them has always been this charged, or if he’s imagining it.
Vicious inclines his head so that his hair obscures his face. “If you would like me to leave the ship. I will.”
“Don’t leave because of that,” Spike says, shutting the door behind him. Suddenly the room feels very small, very intimate. “Just. It’s a lot to throw at a guy, you know? How long have you been hiding that from me?”
Vicious says nothing, watching him with solemn gray eyes.
“How long?” Spike asks. “I think you owe me a little bit of honesty after everything.”
“I don’t know,” Vicious says, a flash of fury in his expression, anger at the vulnerability forced on him. “Since we were kids.”
Since we were kids? As Spike’s left eye plays out the past for him—Vicious’ elusive smile, half hidden by gray hair, flashes of a silver katana cutting down gunmen with Spike in their sights, Mao’s veiled comments about Vicious’ weakness and Julia’s subtle complaints—he realizes it probably should have been obvious.
“I never expected you to love me,” Vicious says. His mouth curls into a snarl, and he looks every bit the savage beast he is. “But you left me. I trusted you, and you left me.”
Spike has never seen Vicious like this, his anger running hot, not cold, borne of hurt and sorrow rather than indifference and cruelty.
“I always knew that you would,” Vicious says. “That you were too good—for me, for the syndicate, for all of it. But I ignored the truth until it was too late. When I found out you were leaving...you have no idea what hate really is, Spike. I wanted you dead. I did.”
“You don’t scare me,” Spike says, because it’s the truth. He’s never been afraid of Vicious and never will be.
“Death doesn’t scare you. Regardless of its ambassador.” Vicious tilts his head so his hair falls in his face. “I wanted Julia to be the one to kill you. So you would know what it’s like when the only person you love betrays you.”
Spike huffs a soft laugh. He doesn’t know why he finds it funny, but somehow time and distance have rendered all that fury and heartbreak absurd. Maybe because he never loved Julia the way he thought he did, and she didn’t love him like that either. They both wanted out more than they wanted each other, and so they ended up on separate trajectories, never to converge again.
His left eye isn’t playing the usual montage—Julia in the honeyed light of morning, the graveyard in the rain. Instead, he’s back to back with Vicious in a dirty alley, a spray of bullets all around but the two of them are invincible together, as they always have been.
“What do you want, Vicious?”
Vicious is quiet for a moment, and Spike thinks he’s not going to answer.
“I want to see you bleed,” he says, finally. “I want you to get on your knees and beg for forgiveness that I will not give you. I want the Elders of the Red Dragon Clan to weep tears of scarlet. And I want to fuck you.”
Spike grins, because for a moment Vicious lines up perfectly in his vision, past and present overlapping in a single frame. And then it breaks apart again, because in his memories Vicious is putting his hand on Julia’s back, leading her away, but in the present he’s bridging the distance between them, pushing Spike back against the closed door, pressing their lips together and thoroughly claiming his mouth.
It’s satisfying to see Vicious with some color in his cheeks, panting as he moves his hips against Spike’s, one hand fisted in Spike’s unruly hair and his gaze intent enough to burn, never leaving Spike’s face.
“Look at me,” he growls, tugging on Spike’s hair hard enough to hurt. “Look at me with both eyes, Spike.”
“I am,” Spike says. He couldn’t see anything besides Vicious if he tried—Vicious practicing with his katana in the purple Martian twilight, Vicious impassive and still as they stood before the Elders to receive orders. Vicious glaring at Mao with resentment, then his gaze softening as he turned to Spike.
“It has only ever been you,” Vicious says, and kisses him again.
Spike wonders if that’s true for him as well.
Judas, you know the lonesome road, don’t you?
Collecting bottle caps of rum
Honest sinning to chase the blues
Blurrier till kingdom comes
……..ALL’S FAIR IN LOVE AND WAR