Title: The Sixth Shot
Author: Aerith Queen of Cetra
Chapters: 1/1
Summary: She fired. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Five Shots. It wasn't enough. One bullet remained.
Genre: Angst/Tragedy
Beta'd: Nu-uh!
Warnings: Angstness!! Spoilers for last episodes, almost OOCness, death
Disclaimer: Don't own Cowboy Bebop, if I did, then Spike would have come back in the end ;.;
Author's Comments: O.O There's something wrong with me… I can't stop writing Cowboy Bebop fics! Especially SpikexFaye… definitely my Cowboy Bebop OTP! XDD
I usually try to avoid using quotes when I can't find the author's name but since this quote was just too perfect, so I had to use it!
The Sixth Shot
Nothing hurts more than realizing he meant everything to you, but you meant nothing to him.
-Unknown Author-
Footsteps of finality echoed across the Bebop as Spike Spiegal made his last trek through the hallways of the ancient ship.
He stopped as a gun was held to his head, a slender and pale arm holding it firmly in place as Faye Valentine smirked past its barrel.
Her eyes seemed to say, "You aren't going anywhere, Spiegal."
Faye's frustrated voice said to him. "You told me once to forget the past, that it didn't matter, but you're the one who is living in the past."
He smiled to himself, pressing his hand against the wall to steady himself as he leaned towards her shocked face.
Spike's warm breath against her moist lips made her legs weak and she had to work hard in order to keep her balance and to keep her blush down.
"Look at my eyes, Faye. One of them is a fake because I lost it in an accident. Since then I've been seeing the past in one eye and the present in the other."
His whispered words so close, too close, to her face confused her as she stared into his eyes and noticed two separate entities staring back.
The past was such a key element to her and, evidently, to Spike as well. Her thoughts on this time forced her to unknowingly pass his next few words into a jumbled miasma of nonsense.
She mumbled something about her own past, about her returning memory and a myriad of questions about his pathway to self-destruction. Faye pondered the weakness of those questions before his next words interrupted her thoughts.
"I'm not going there to die, I'm going there to find out if I'm really alive."
He walked away from her, towards the hanger and forever away from the Bebop, from her.
Faye's lips curled in desperation and the trigger of the gun in her hand was pulled.
One shot.
Two shots.
Three shots.
Four shots.
Five shots.
She wanted to cry out his name. One more feeble attempt to bring him back. Nothing would though and she felt the tears fall faster when she slipped to the floor in time with the tremors of the Bebop as Spike's ship left for, what she knew would be, the last time.
She didn't know how long she sat there, it felt like an eternity of passing. Where was Jet? Didn't he know she was there? She closed her eyes and blindly stumbled to her feet, shuffling her way to the deck of the ship.
Looking out of the window, her eye caught the imprint of something. A face.
A long, cheerful grin that instantly brought the name 'Edward' to her mind. Faye frowned as she touched the window, gently forming the imprint of the face on the window with her index finger.
Ed was gone. Ein was gone. Spike was gone. How long would it be before Jet would be gone too?
She would be alone again. Just like she was when she had first been unfrozen and that snake, Whitney Haagus Matsumoto, had abandoned her.
Her hand found its way to her face and she shook her head at the lonely deck of the Bebop and then at the empty living room.
She couldn't handle it, she couldn't handle being alone any more. Wasn't that the reason she had come back to the Bebop?
Faye laughed with conviction. Just a few days away and the Bebop had fallen apart without her, her mind seemed to say.
And her eyes wired painfully shut as guilt and shame flooded her being. Her family was gone…again…
She weakly called out the single name that still held movement in the dark ship, "Jet?"
She stood to her full height and screamed with an almost panicked tone. "Jet? Jet! Where are you?"
Shaking her head at the inevitabilities of her impending solitude she reached both of her hands to her head only to find the forgotten implement of destruction colliding with her skull in a painful thud.
Wincing, she pulled the gun down to eye level, fondling it lovingly with an almost psychotic gleam in her eye.
Her mind was flooded with memories as the shine of the weapon reflected the shocking sight of her optimistic eyes.
The stretching glimmer of a younger smile.
Cracks on the window. A broken moon.
Scattered stars made of floating red baubles.
A tanned hand slowly guiding her into a dance. And a kiss.
The glimmer of multicoloured eyes beneath rivers of bandages.
A smiling face, guarding her as she slept. A face she could wake up to forever. A face she would never see again. Ever.
That face was gone and so was her 'forever' and her grief stricken mind, already fragile and bruised from the hurtle of memories through her skull, came to a single conclusion.
She had no reason to live.
She looked at the gun again, twisting the side until out came the vintage revolving chambers. She looked into the cylindrical holes and counted them.
One.
Two.
Three.
Four.
Five.
Five Shots.
One bullet remained.
Faye smirked, flipping the gun back into place. It was almost as if Spike had planned it himself, leaving her a single bullet to finish the job.
Her smirk fell into a sad smile as she raised the horrific weapon to the tip of her temple. "If that's what you want…"
Footsteps echoed down a stairwell, far away from where the Bebop hovered.
A lonely figure limped down the steps of the Syndicate's headquarters.
One step.
Two steps.
Three steps.
Four steps.
Five steps.
He stopped and looked at the sky, the image of a twinkling star came to mind.
He raised one finger to that star and closed over three fingers, his thumb and index forming the impression of a gun.
His eye, the past seeker, looked straight at the star and, with a smile, he whispered a single word.
"Bang."
She pulled the trigger.
Six shots.
First of all…….. Wow to me… second… FAYE!! (cries)
I've read all these tragic fics about Spike's death and I haven't seen a lot about Faye. And since I love angsty things happening to my fave character - Wah! So, here's a different take on the ending of 'The Real Folk Blues' so, Spike doesn't die… or does he?? Ooh!