A Song for Julia

Title - A Song for Julia

Author - trowacko

Rating - PG

Warnings - a little angst, Gren/Julia

Disclaimers - I do not own Cowboy Bebop in any way, nor do I make a claim to. No profit, no harm done.

Author\'s note - based on the episodes Jupiter Jazz. I think.

Sitting at the bar was almost like provoking a group of uneasy dogs it seemed. Men who hadn\'t seen another woman for months or years all gawked openly, many with the sheen of unrepentant lust in their eyes the first week. It was dangerous being on the planet; of that there was no doubt. Being a woman and having it known was even worse on a rock that harbored no women at all. It didn\'t matter, though, when she listened to the song. Wrapped in its soulless tune, it didn\'t matter if the group in the back planned on following her when she left the first time. Or that the man next to her held a vial of some drug he had tried vainly to sneak into her drink for the first two nights. Only the music mattered to the woman. When the tune ended the hush that clung to the place slowly sank into drunken conversation.

\"Will you play it once more, Gren?\" she asked quietly. The man was a good ten feet away from her, yet he nodded nonetheless.

Few cared if the music played or not, and fewer cared that the same song had played a dozen times in a row. They were men with the cares of the damned, a people ruled by circumstance and ill fortune alone that they had not yet despaired living on the desolate planet. Their lives might have started out very differently, but it was the ending - the present - that remained the same of all of them. The bar was the same kind of escape that coming to the planet in the first place had been. Except once inside the bar, there was nowhere else to run except for the bottle. The man playing the saxophone was simply another distraction, a melody to keep time with their imagined steps running away, just away. It happened in many a mind while the body sat upon chair, worn clothes covering them, if not warming them. Hands on the table, a smoke sometimes in one, and a drink invariably in the other.

\"May I ask the lady\'s name if I cannot buy her a drink?\" Gren asked for the tenth time in as many nights. Rather than give the usual demure smile and look away, the woman took a sip of her drink and turned her whole body to face the musician.

\"Julia,\" she sighed. Her expression didn\'t change and it was hard for Gren to determine whether or not she spoke the truth or just happened to know the song\'s name. It fit her though. The melody was as full as her loose ashen blonde hair, the name a whisper of something heavy spoken in soft tones. Her eyes were dark although their shade was definitely light in color. Rarely did her lips do more than purse in a perpetual half-smile other than to carefully sip her drink or utter the same request to play again. The long notes he produced meant something he couldn\'t identify though part of him loathed the idea of understanding it at all. The tune was as somber and mysterious as was the woman that it only seemed right that they shared the same name.

Gren didn\'t respond as he mulled over her name. With a small smile, he put the sax back to his lips, closed his eyes and he began to play. His long black bangs fell over his face until only the instrument remained. And once the sound claimed him, even that gave itself until there was only Julia.

The music filled the room again, forcing the very air to feel heavier in one\'s lungs. Conversation, whether or not people noticed, drew to a halt once more as the musician\'s song began anew. No one had memorized its progression to recognize the lilts and tempo that it drew in the air that it was like listening to it for the first time. Enchanting, they would have said had they remembered what the word meant. It made one forget and remember all at once, that much they understood. And even for those who didn\'t like the instrument being played, they liked the song produced from the artist\'s efforts.

Perhaps it was the song that kept the woman safe night after night. That by the time she left for the night at precisely midnight, no one followed her out no matter what their plans were when she sat down and ordered her first drink. She hadn\'t been accosted or otherwise molested by any of the patrons or citizens of the planet and that in itself was a bit of a curiosity. For the longest time, even before he got to know Julia more, Gren often wondered how she managed to avoid unsavory contact. Because she\'s Julia, his mind would reply just as often.

Play it one more time, please?

He shouldn\'t have gotten to know the woman. The night he invited her to his home, he should have gone with his instincts and simply played the song again. Instead he\'d walked out the door with her, leaving work early - not that anyone noticed, of course. At home, lounging on the couch with her sitting primly in the large recliner, he hadn\'t known what to say. Worse, she lost some of her ethereal beauty when he discovered she not only known of Vicious, she knew him quite well. It was easy to see she\'d been scarred by the man at some point in a way different than the way he had. She didn\'t judge him or even ask him how he\'d come to know Vicious as well as he did. The knowledge came later when it barely mattered and only solidified what each guessed of the other\'s past. Until then, it seemed enough that they shared memories of a man and had been hurt. He shared something in common with the woman, but even that didn\'t make her any more human to him. She was still Julia.

\"Would you like me to play it for you again?\" he\'d asked out of the blue one night. The case sat between them on the coffee table, his feet kicked up on one side, her untouched drink on the other. She shook her head.

\"It seems better to hear it out there,\" she nodded toward the window where a chill rain fell. He didn\'t pretend to understand what she meant and only nodded in return.

Julia

The lady and the tiger wrapped together in a neat enigma. She had seen death; she had dealt it, too. There was nothing she hadn\'t endured, yet darkness, whatever form she had encountered, didn\'t touch the surface of the woman. The scars and wounds she carried remained hidden, too deep to even see to the passing eye. Perhaps only Vicious, or Spike, or himself could deign to peer just a bit deeper. That both had loved the woman was without question. He felt Vicious\' love would have been the love of a connoisseur collecting magnificent art, whereas Spike\'s would have been for the provocation of seeing life in the midst of death - a savior, maybe. In his own way, Gren loved the woman too. The song had helped keep him alive in the throes of one bloody war and that was all he really needed to know of the lady. She saved him with the song and damned him to love it at the same time.

Oh, but sometimes such things didn\'t matter. Not when she\'d sit with her back to him at her usual place and play with her glass while listening intently to the same song again and again. When she\'d glance back at him as if to smile and only ask him to play the song once more. Always, once more, and no one ever complained. Julia, his mind would whisper in the moments when the song\'s doleful beginning resonated in the cloying air. Julia, the stranger, the beauty, the killer in the way she made men lust and feel guilty for it. When the men looked at her, they saw a lady who couldn\'t be looked upon for long else they\'d feel a formless sort of pain, a loss that they had never, nor would any of them ever attain such a woman in their lives. Yet they could feel privileged - again in a formless sort of way - that they\'d shared her company at all. Sometimes when the song made her weep silently, it gave some a sense of joy when her tears dropped to mingle with the condensation of her drink on the polished bar. Something that they couldn\'t explain, let alone share so they made up lies about the weakness of women, and then hated themselves for it should anyone so much as chuckle.

He could sort of understand that when he\'d first shown the gift Vicious had given him to Julia weeks later. She had smiled painfully as it played, an odd glint to her beautiful eyes until she handed it back and whispered of its dark little secret. Of course, the music box wouldn\'t play again once the solar transmitter was taken out of it. Robbed of its exquisite tune, the little gadget would stare balefully at Gren for hours in silence. He didn\'t make the connection at first. That the box had been Vicious\' and she\'d stolen the voice back that it had played. Inadvertently, she\'d hurt Gren at the same time, but he couldn\'t fault her for that. The song belonged to her - it was her. It was an honor to have known her before he even set eyes on her he would console himself occasionally. And when he returned the box to Vicious someday, he would return a bit of himself and the lady\'s pain with it. It was a promise he didn\'t tell the woman.

Just one more time?

The last time he played the song for her, he bled himself. His throat worked diligently, forcing the haunting melody from the depths of his soul. She didn\'t cry that night, however. She sat in her usual place, one hand on her drink, the other trembling upon her lap. When it ended, she didn\'t turn and ask him to play it again. Instead, she quietly got up and laid out some coins on the bar. As she walked out, she glanced at Gren and smiled, the only time he recalled her smiling as radiantly as she did. Gren could not coax his own lips to return the gesture in kind, and he settled on a simple nod.

She\'d dropped from Heaven to their little piece of Hell and left a bit of hope behind when she returned to the stars. Not enough to warm the soul, but at least enough to take the bite of chill out of one\'s body when they walked into the bar. Every so often Gren reluctantly played the warm melody, not to honor the lady, but the song. The patrons would slowly stop what they were doing and simply listen. He played the song and they played their memories of the woman who could almost be seen sitting at the end of the bar, a glass in front of her that she barely touched. The half-smile they knew so well would part when the song ended, but there was no one left to ask Gren to play again. Someday he knew he\'d play the song that one last time. His only regret was that she wouldn\'t hear it and soon there would be no one left to remember it had even existed. It was just as well, though. A song as lovely belonged among the stars, much like the lady did. On the last day the melody played, he\'d find the stars too.

*just because it comes from the mind of a wacko, doesn\'t necessarily mean it\'s insane*