"Not again, Spike… Come on…"
Spike was silent. In front of him, randomly tossed around, a few butts of cigarettes could be seen. He was sitting on the ground, his back to the bleak wall, his legs stretched out in front of him. Another cigarette was tightly squeezed between his colorless lips.
Next to him, playing with a Glock semi-automatic in her right hand, Faye was standing. She was intently watching the ceiling, eyes fixed on an unmarked point. Behind them in the adjacent compartment, Jet was idly stretching.
"I'm really happy you didn't go, you know…"
His silence did not give in. All that could be heard was the puffing of the cigarette, magnified by the tension in the air. Faye looked down, and for the second time in two weeks, she realized Spike was crying. Tears were rolling down his cheeks, and his face was red as a brick. He was somehow containing his sobs inside of him, which just made things worse.
"Look, Spike, if you're not gonna talk, then don't talk, but realize I probably saved your life!!'
She tried walking away, but after taking a few steps, she looked back, and her steps led her back to her prior location.
"Can you spare one?"
Spike tossed her a cigarette. She lighted it and started puffing, while slowly sinking to his level on the ground. She realized he had stopped crying, but his face was more troubled than ever.
"Spike…"
"Look, Faye, I don't need your pity. You've done enough already…"
In any other situation, she would get pretty angry; but she restrained herself. Instead, she cut him off:
"FINE! Maybe I should've let you waste your already fucked up life for a corpse"
"Not all corpses are the same"
"BUT THEY HAVE SOMETHING IN COMMON, SPIKE!!! THEY'RE ALL DEAD"
"Neither are all the dead the same"
"OH REALLY?!?!?"
She couldn't say much. Two weeks ago she had convinced Spike not to go after Vicious for having killed Julia, and since then, he hadn't been the same. His transformation was reflecting on them all; they hadn't caught even a single bounty in a long while, and they were literally starving. Plus, both the Bebop and the Redtail were unusable, and the Swordfish was damaged.
"You just don't get it, Faye. You just don't get it…"
"You're absolutely right. I don't get why someone would die for something as pointless as revenge. Nothing's gonna bring her back, Spike, and you know it as well as I do. And if you had killed Vicious, they weren't gonna let you get out alive."
"You still don't get it." – She started getting quite irritated.
"NOBODY ELSE DOES, EITHER. Look, Vicious is dead anyway. The syndicate is destroyed, all your enemies have been buried, even their graves have already been defiled… What's the hell's the point of crying now?"
"Faye, do you even know how Vicious died?"
"Yeah, there was a new coup, and the syndicate became divided. His car was bombed…"
"And you still don't know why I'm crying?"
"Well, obviously not"
"BECAUSE I WASN'T THE ONE WHO FINISHED HIM OFF!!!"
He was suddenly towering above her, and she realized how small she was… She felt like a midget next to a giant.
"Faye, have you ever known hunters?"
"Yeah"
"Then you know how a hunter feels when his target is shot by someone else. I was the hunter, Vicious was the target… And suddenly some other idiot got him… Only, in this case, the target had already killed me. I was the ghost of myself"
There was a short moment of silence. Then, Faye's expression became much more sympathetic, emotional. She smiled at him:
"Stop talking like that, Spike… You were the one always saying that whatever happens happens, right? So forget it… Not only is it the past, but it's also the past you can't ever change"
"If you hadn't stopped me, I would've been lying in my grave now, relaxed, comforted…"
"And that's how you think it's gonna be, Spike? Just relaxation and comfort? It's death we're talking about, you don't have to be so immature and romantic about it, we're all adults here…"
Spike was now pacing. Jet had stood up, and was heading toward the kitchen. It was close to noon.
"Beside, Spike, if love's what you wanted, you can find it with someone else…"
He stopped and looked at her intently. For a moment the tip of his cigarette stopped burning:
"What do you mean?"
Faye stood up, approaching him with her watery, agitated eyes looking deep inside him. Her voice was shaking, and her breath quickened:
"Am I really that good at keeping a secret, Spike? Don't you know?"
She took his hand, and tried wrapping her arm around her neck. Her head slowly moved towards his shoulder, and for a second rested upon it. A shiny tear flowed down and wetted his blue coat…
Spike, at first confused, suddenly pushed her away. For a moment, she had seen Julia instead of Faye… The way both women approached him was the same… The way they embraced him was the same… Everything was the same… But now Faye, embarrassed and humiliated, was looking at him with plight and heartbreak in her eyes:
"Faye, what the hell…"
"FORGET IT!!" – And she ran out of the hallway into her so-called "room".
For two days, nothing important happened. Neither Spike, nor Faye left their rooms, they didn't even eat. Jet was always alone; sometimes he tried working on the ship repairs, but he soon realized the hopelessness of the situation, and gave up.
On the third day, Faye left her self-made cage, and without even looking around started knocking on Spike's room, as if she had made a sudden decision.
"Spike, OPEN UP!" – And she pushed.
To her surprise, the door wasn't even locked. She went in, and… Jet heard a piercing cry that stabbed his ears. He ran to Spike's room as fast as he could with his wounded knee, and found Faye kneeling on the ground, her head between her hands, crying her heart out.
On the ground, near her, lay a silenced gun, the one Spike never used, but kept as a treasure. It was a gift from Mao. Near the gun, lay a body; it was shot through the head, and blood had splattered the opposite wall. On the pillow, a piece of scrunched paper was placed, as dead as the body.
"I never liked cats…"