So what are these? These are five scenes or little drafts on different things I started writing, but never finished or never really ended up being a story or part of a story. So now, I've just collected them and put it on here. I've never been fond of posting things like this, but this next chapter of Heroes is taking a while, so I'm posting this instead.

This first one was supposed to be a one-shot, but it never quite made it to that status. It takes place right after Speak Like a Child.

Her Memory

The girl's hair was so black that it shone a dark violet, and kind of raggedy straight too, but what made his thoughts and anticipations of this tamatebago scratch off from his record rather abruptly was her deep emerald eyes. He knew those eyes so very well. They were the same eyes that constantly rolled away from him, scolded and poked fun at him. The same eyes that thinned down like a cat's whenever she had a devious plan in mind and a new way—which she had become extremely skilled at—to annoy the living hell out of him. Except the little girl's eyes had such innocence in them. Innocence that Spike may have caught once or twice, when Faye thought he hadn't been looking.

It's rather funny how knowing the past of a person suddenly makes them so much more real and extremely impossible to ignore. Faye's younger image basically took a chisel against his brain and carved out this humane side he had neglected, because she didn't exactly portray it. Actually, she tended to do everything possible to reject that image like eating Ein's food, or kicking him, or stealing his cigarettes, or (and more importantly) their money.

What could he infer from her tomboy ways? Like that time she spit on his food, what kind of woman would actually do that? And she actually scratched her breast just like that and right in front of him. Spike really hadn't been able—or allowed himself—to see her for other than how she portrayed herself, because he figured that was how she wanted it.

The real problem behind her lies and all her gimmicks was that she really didn't know who to be at all. She couldn't remember.

He was pissed though. After all that trouble of chasing to find the stupid player for the ancient—what was it called?—recordy windy thing, he had expected like a funny video or porn. Well, think about it for a moment. Faye does give off the "I've been in a porn film for sure" vibe sometimes. Something he could torment her about for the rest of her puny tomboy life, but instead he found himself learning about her. He learned about her sweet and gentle side that had been long and lost while she slept for so many decades. She had dreamed it away.

The hardest part really was when he heard her whispers.

"I don't know. I can't remember. Is this me?"

His shoulders drooped and he ripped his glare from the screen. Jet sat there basically dumbfounded while Ed yelled in a shrilly voice imitating young Faye's cheers, "Me! Me! Me!"

Spike turned around slowly, somewhat afraid to see her reaction, but she was gone by the time his eyes searched around the room for her. She disappeared after that, and neither him nor Jet complained about it, because this time they understood her reasons.

It drove him nuts though for days and days not knowing what her reaction was. He didn't quite understand why he wanted to know so badly, but a part of him needed to close the chapter. He needed for her to spit on his brush, or scratch her armpits so she could go back to being tomboy Faye in his mind, and not—not—whatever she had become.

Finally after about a week she came back. He laid on the yellow couch his eyes occasionally wandering open to focus a little more on that spot in the ceiling he could have sworn looked like Gandhi. He heard the poignant clacking of her heels and his body unintentionally shot up. He set his eyes on her and for the first time in his life he saw a frail image. Her cheeks had turned a rosy color, probably from the heat at this time of year on Mars, and her eyes had this depth to them after seeing the video. He could see shades of her in them—young, innocent, wild, free and hurt. For a second, she looked precious. Not in the sappy way either, but like he had set his eyes on someone so extraordinary that he should take a mental Polaroid and spit it out his mouth in case when he retold the story of this living ghost he had met, people would actually believe him.

"You're back? Did you bring food?" It was all he could come up with at that moment. She glanced at him and smirked. Her shoulders rounded back and her arms pushed out to form a shrug. She was mocking him. He didn't know why or what she was mocking, but he could see it in her eyes. After, the shrug she kept walking toward the space she had appropriated as her room.

"Jet?" He heard Faye say after a door slid open. The sudden clanks of Jet's metal boots echoed from the hall, and Jet's deep voice muttered some comments. The incoherent conversation between the two died after five minutes or so, and the door slid shut.

"Out? Goddamn it, what kind of answer is that? This isn't some motel that she can just up and—" Jet cut his sentence abruptly as he saw Spike sitting on the yellow couch, staring at his angry muttering. He cleared his throat and headed in the direction of the bridge.

"Did she tell you?" Spike asked, pulling out a cigarette from his pocket.

"What?" Jet stopped, and turned back to him. Spike had lit his cigarette and took two drags before he answered Jet.

"Did she tell you if that was her?" Jet still looked confused. "On the video, was it her?" Spike asked again. Jet's dark eyes widened while his mouth frowned.

"Leave it alone, Spike," he said, turning back to the bridge and walking away.

It was easy for him to say that, but then Spike couldn't believe that all this time she had been gone that Jet hadn't been wondering about that video. He knew for fact that the old cop must have been as curious as himself, because if not, then Jet wouldn't have put the old television and the player thing they found in her room.

Spike heard a door slide open down the hall, and Faye came out again. She stood on the top landing of the stairs looking down at her feet. She lifted her gaze, pulling some of her hair back, and Spike jumped back for a moment. He knew it then that it had to be her on the video. That same stare, those same movements, they were all hers. But, hold on, there was a problem. These things were ancient. These were old. Why hadn't he thought of this before? It couldn't be her.

"Jet, he put that thing in my room, didn't he?" she said in a meek voice. It was disturbing him. He wanted to shake her, so she could turn back into Faye Valentine and not this thing in front of him.

"What makes you think that's your room?" he said, looking away from her. She scoffed.

"You looked scared for a moment there." She walked down the stairs and toward the couch. She sat next to him and rested her head against the back of the couch, her face up toward the ceiling.

He inched away from her.

"You think I'm a ghost?" she asked, a knowing smile set on her light pink lips.

"It looks like you, but it can't be you. You know that," he said, completely unsure of everything that was coming out of his mouth. She sat up and glared at him. Her brow had tensed, and her eyes had turned somber.

"I know that," she said in a low whisper. She stood up and looked back at him and smirked. "I'm not a ghost," she said, "I'm an illusion."