A/N: Takes place after the events of the final episode, The Real Folk Blues (pt. 2).
Disclaimer: I do not own Cowboy Bebop.
"I heard he went to the syndicate."
She was sitting on the pier, her long legs spiraling downward into the water. Mars, again, the backdrop of cities basked in neon lights. They were running out of places to go, they knew that. The skyscrapers mocked them from a distance.
"And?"
He lit up a cigarette beside her. His eyes bore some strange heaviness, as he turned away, though she couldn't see his face. His voice seemed muffled, faint. Far away.
"He blew away half of their people."
"Vicious, too," as an afterthought.
She leaned back. No, more like she slumped back. Talking gave her such a headache these days, so her mind preferred to wander. She really needed to wash these clothes. Oh, but the money. Neither one of them had enough woolongs to buy a drink, let alone soap. Did soap even exist anymore? How did people even invent soap?
"So no more Red Dragon, then."
Not quite a question but with the persuasion of one, he inhaled deeply at the thought. He tapped absentmindedly on his crumpled package of off-brand cigarettes, each one worse than the next. The haunting taste of sulfur never left his mouth, anyway. It didn't seem to matter.
"I guess it's dissolved."
She smiled rather evenly. It was too early in the morning to be awake, to exist. To feel guilty. There was never a moment in her life when she didn't imagine something other than this, but this was what it all came down to in the end. She was discouraged from gambling, but to gamble in human lives!
"Dissolved. Funny you should mention that..."
He looked up, sharply. He, too, grew weary from the same sights. The flashy city lights he drank in and grew intoxicated, poisoned by the retribution. He longed for Ganymede and cursed the day he ever converted that damned fishing vessel into the Bebop.
"Why's that?"
It was just a poker game, five-card stud, and too much roulette.
"I didn't think that really interested him."
A catch.
"Is that so. So what were his motives?"
"He wanted to know if he was really alive or not."
He pulled out another cigarette, his fifth, and it was hardly morning. The night was another thing entirely.
"So what was the verdict?"
They both saw this question coming, though they knew too well not to feign familiarity. She gestured to the Bebop door with a nod of her head.
"What do you think?"
The green hair. He had warned against it, rather contemptuously, but she chased after the green hair anyway. It seemed pointless to do otherwise. His body mummified in bandages was the only collateral to his existence. Temporary, if not fragile, but at least the crew could sleep in peace tonight.
"What made you bring him?"
She laughed. It was damaging, really, to her own reputation. She was not one to linger; that hardly suited her tastes. Lingering was an act of unsolicited defiance. But that didn't explain why she was still there. The foul carnage was everywhere at the syndicate headquarters. One body sprawled out on the staircase. Professionalism, at its best.
"The same reason you always let me back in."
He raised an eyebrow, the cigarette near singeing his fingertips.
"Home."
Cue music.