Will she never find her way home? [Faye on reckoning day]
AN: Spike/Faye is sort of...tough, actually. To write, I mean. Um.
-
She wandered that night.
Out on the streets the lights were painfully bright: neon orange and blinding green and blood crimson. It was a river of swarming humanity; traffic, stuck inevitably in its nighttime ritual, crowded the roads; tempers spilled over and men yelled at each other, the young ones especially, because they were still riding high on the confidence of youth. They ran in front of screeching car horns, knocked over trashcans, bullied the little old lady trying to cross the road. One of them whistled as Faye walked by. She gave him a look from under her eyelashes, and it wasn't friendly.
All the while the river of people flowed onward. Some shuffled, others skipped through a stupor of liquor, still others strode forward with some indeterminable purpose.
And there was her.
Her shoes, hastily put on upon leaving, slapped down onto pavement in monotonous clip-clops. They were sleek, she observed, sleek and with only an inch of heel, dark in color, comfortable, still somehow made her legs look miles long. She remembered borrowing the money from Jet to buy them, sneaking through his stockpile when he was snipping away at his ugly old trees. Come to think of it, she had never paid him back.
She was nearing the casino now. It reared up in front of her with all the contempt of a proud lion, tall, elegantly constructed. Its lights outshone even the brightest of the others, proclaiming fun and girls and cold, hard cash. Around her the river parted, its multitudes of people edging around her, as if they could read her face, her dangerous mood.
No. They couldn't. She was no easier to read than Spike during a game of poker. They had their masks. She had hers. Everybody did.
Still they avoided her, as if intimidated. Yet how could they be, by her? The women, maybe, because she was what they weren't, danger and sex and money all done up in a long, leggy package. But the men—no, they should've been falling all over themselves trying to get at her, pigs that they were.
There were no pigs tonight. She supposed she should've been grateful.
The door opened in front of her, sliding apart like magic. She entered without flicking an eyelash at the people who skirted past her wake.
-
The female waitresses avoided her. She had long since taught them to play their catty games with someone who cared.
"Ric," she called.
"Ah, Faye." The man paused in mid-step, balancing a bottle of vodka and an elaborately carved bowl of ice. The lights overhead caught and sparkled very prettily in the depths of alcohol and crystal. "It'll be the usual?"
"Yeah," she said, and took the bottle from his grasp, slowly, deliberately. "Thank you, Ric darling."
Without another word she headed for the tables, for the still brighter lights and the heat of luck and the toss of the dice. If she had looked back she would've seen him shaking his head, rebalancing the bowl of ice on the silver platter; she would've seen him heading off to serve a next wealthy customer, but looking back at her too, with eyes only a little worried. She would've laughed, that someone was worried over her.
-
"Dealer."
"Here," the man said. His blue eyes flicked over her form. "Well hello there, Miss."
She settled herself down onto the stool. "Deal."
He did. She watched the rhythmic motions of his hands, but what was the point? Hers were eyes trained to see the slight of hand, a flicker of fingers to quick for normal people to catch. The boy looked so young he probably still called home to have a talk with mama, from time to time.
"I can win everything from you," she said. She watched as he looked up.
"Miss?" he asked politely. "I'm afraid I don't understand."
She shook her head. "Get on with it."
The cards came shuffling to her, whispery against forest green table. She bent the tip towards her, caught a glimpse of red, put it back down. "One more," she said, and he passed her another.
It was black this time; the nine of clovers. She nodded. "Alright."
The man spread out his cards with a flourish. "Twenty."
She flipped over hers carelessly. "Twenty." She looked up at him, and he smiled.
"What do you say?"
She only looked at him. "Deal."
He did. She drew three cards again. He drew four. When they flipped it over the results were again the same, but this time nineteen. She watched him smile at her; another time she might've risen up to the challenge; she might've smiled back. But this time she didn't.
"Again," she said. The cards came to her, ornate red design engraved into a gold-black background. She held, this time, waited for him, nails resting on the edge of the table, polished shells cushioned in soft green.
"Show me."
He did. It was an eighteen. She flipped hers over and it was an eighteen as well.
"Touche," she said softly.
-
In time he asked her for her name. She looked up from studying her nails, distracted momentarily from the perpetual shuffle-shuffle of the cards.
"What?"
"I said, what's your name?" Patiently.
"Lillian." She had always wanted to be Lillian, for some reason or other.
"Lillian." He said it slowly, as if savoring the word. Then he smiled at her, as bright and innocent as a child. "It's a pretty name."
"Yeah," she said indifferently.
"Too bad it's not really yours."
"Yeah," she said, "Too bad."
Not even a beat of silence from him. "I'm Lane."
"Hello, Lane. Could you go get me another drink?" She gestured at the empty bottle of vodka.
"I'd be happy to." He leaned towards her, not with the air of a man who wanted her, but with the air of someone who just curious. "Tell me your name first."
"Name's Faye," she hiccupped, pressing her hand into her chest. "Now will you get me the damn bottle?"
He went off with a sunny smile. She slumped down, and let herself drift off.
-
She dreamed. She dreamed that Spike was leaving again, and that she was crying; no, not crying, but sobbing. Even in dreams she didn't understand why she was crying for him, Spike Spiegel with his suicidal tendencies and his carelessness and his unholy fixation on a woman dead to the rest of the world. Again she lowered the gun to his temple, sighting down cold metal and cold air and trying to make herself cold, cold, colder, deep inside. Again she dropped the gun, limbs weak like a weeping young girl's. Again he came at her, and his eyes were mismatched like those of a monster's. Only this time he didn't just look - he grabbed onto her shoulders, fingers gripping and digging and bruising and hurting -
She cried. She cried for a lost family - because that was what they were, what they had been taking the steps towards becoming, their dysfunctional mish-mash of a family: of a girl - no, not a girl, but a woman - a woman with no past and no future and not even a present, not really, and a genius girl-boy who called the woman Faye-Faye, who ate dog biscuits and patrolled the Bebop down alongside Ein, and an ex-cop with an unhealthy fascination for pruning trees, of all things, who was a penny-pinching scrooge if there ever was one, and – and -
She cried, and cried, and cried. She cried until she woke up.
--
"What is this?" She shied away from the cup. The contents were yellow-brown, and steam filled the room with a smell that reminded her of skunk piss.
"Herbal tea," he said calmly, and thrust it at her again, undeterred by her efforts to knock it out of his hands. "Drink - hey! – Wait - don't - "
She threw her legs over the side of the bed, and then promptly dropped back down. Her butt collided with the floor. "Goddamnit!"
"Told you not to do that," he said, a touch smugly.
Her head ached. She cradled it with the crook of her arm. "You sonofabitch, what did you do to me?"
"I didn't do anything." She heard him moving away, whistling cheerfully. "You did this to yourself, Miss Faye Valentine." Her wallet came sailing in from his general direction. It hit her in the face with a solid smack. She flinched back and cursed again.
"Don't try anything, or else you'll keel right over."
"You think I need to be told that?" she half-snarled.
He turned around from straightening the trinkets on his bookshelf. His smile nearly blinded her. "Of course not."
--
They sat together on his balcony outside, watching as the night around them exploded in blooms of crimson and gold and tawny yellow the color of sunflowers. Or rather, he sat, and she leaned against the railing, ignoring the bite of cold iron into tender skin. Some of the fireworks seemed close enough to touch; close enough that maybe, just maybe, she could reach out and grab them, trap them while they were still so beautiful, keep them in her fists, even though she knew her hands would burn.
She thought she felt the press of tears hot against her eyelids, but she ruthlessly forced them back down.
"Are you crying?" he asked.
"Idiot," she said, and turned around for him to see. "Of course not."
He smiled at her, gently. "You are."
And there they were: traitorously wet, tracking down the sides of her cheeks like rain. She didn't wipe them away; nor did she look down, so that he wouldn't be able to see her eyes.
"It's not just a guy, is it?"
"No," she said. "It's never just." And now she did turn away: back to the fireworks as they blossomed in a night sky tinted by city lights.
"Look," he said. She turned to see him pointing up. A flash of electric-blue—vivid aureolin yellow—and the sky above them exploded into red. Her heartbeat quickened, hands clenching around ornately wrought iron.
"They just killed off one of the abandoned planets," he said, softly. Lights painted his face red.
"Why would they do that?" she heard herself asking.
"Something about a poisoned atmosphere. They were afraid it might be used as a hideout for some terrorist group or other." He shook his head, hair glinting violet in the dim light. "Look what we do: we discover the planet, we swarm all over the planet, we kill the planet, slowly. Then after we're through with it we blow it to bits." He gazed steadily upwards.
She was silent. After a while he looked towards her with a small smile playing on his lips. "Ironic, isn't it? Miss Valentine."
She let moments passed, then opened eyes she hadn't realized were closed to find him watching her curiously.
"Yes," she said, "Yes, it is."
She thought she saw the curl of a little laugh at the edge of his lip, but he turned away again before she could be sure. They watched as the dying planet blotted out parts of the sky and a few other stars. She sat her chin down onto her palm, watching, though not really all there.
The sky was alight in flames. She wondered if he saw the same thing now as she did—gold and orange and yellow the color of sun-browned wheat. She wondered if he had seen the planet die, like she had. She wondered, and looked down from the balcony, looked down upon a sea of people, watching them swarm next to and around and over each other, each and everyone for his own.
She tilted her head to look up at the sky again, and didn't move until long after the sky had cleared back to a velvet navy blue. It seemed that maybe, just maybe, the stars shone a little brighter than they had before. And the tears tasted warm and salty, like regret, maybe, if only regret had a taste.
--fin.