Perfect Cadence
Summary: In the wake of the end of things, Faye departs on a journey of self-discovery. But when ghosts of a past life begin to haunt her own waking dream, she must decide whether to accept her reality, or fight the path Fortune has laid before her. Featuring road trips and inadvisable shots of vodka.
Warnings: PG-13 for language (so far), shifty verb tenses, severe lack of beta.
Disclaimer: I don't own anything except for the laptop this was written on. Cowboy Bebop and its characters are the property of Bandai (or is it Sunrise?) and the brainchild of Shinichiro Watanabe. Just borrowing, folks.
It's been four months, and here she is again.
Despite all the shit that'd gone down, the nightmare that seemed like it would never end, she feels something pulling her here. It goes beyond mere wanderlust, more than her gypsy instincts whispering run, run, and maybe this time you'll be free.
No, this is more than that, and it fucking pisses her off.
Faye Valentine isn't one for nostalgia. Life is change. Adaptation. Evolution. She'd come here once before, looking for clues as to who she was and where she came from, and came up with little to nothing.
So, same as always, she's moving on. Moving a little further down the road. And yet…here she is. Staring at the blue pock-marked sphere that humanity once called home. And she has no clue why, except for a vague itch that she'd picked up on the Bebop a couple of days ago.
So she goes. And if she manages to nab the last of the ration bars from Jet's secret stash, well, she'll be back in plenty of time to blame it on the…
Well, not the dog, not anymore. Maybe the bonsais. She suppresses a snort; she can already see the old codger's face when she tells that one.
She sighs, and looks crossly out the cockpit of the Red Tail at the planet and its ring of trash. She isn't used to feeling this way: like someone's taking an eraser to her, leaving her smudged and dirty and raw. She supposes it's only to be expected, but that doesn't mean she can't be a little angry with herself about it. She's Faye Valentine, for fuck's sake! She's stronger than this!
She sighs again, closing her eyes and taking her hands off the controls after setting her ship to stay in orbit with the other pieces of scrapmetal. Things have been different, and yet all too familiar, since Spike left. In one way, his absence seems all too real. Colors spark and tumble where he should be—the tangy yellow couch, the sharp contrast between the void and the lights inside. Spices usually meant to disguise less fresh foods have suddenly been tasting like minor explosions in her mouth. Each clang of the ship, each muttered curse from Jet's mouth—they reverberate in the stillness, and their echoes have been creeping into her dreams.
And despite all this, much like his final words, she herself feels like a dream. Like everything she does is merely a prelude to the next act. On the Bebop, hidden away in her room, she'd slept and woke, only to repeat the process the next day, and the next. Each day she would open her eyes and ask, "Is this the day I wake up?" only to remember that she had. Some part of her supposes she's been grieving for the stupid lunkhead, but in general she's just too apathetic to give it much thought.
Then, one day not too long ago, she did snap awake, and decided to stop moping and start moving. She'd taken on a few bounties with Jet's help; chump change, really, but it'd been just what she needed to kick start her life again. To make the leap from life-with-Spike to life-without. To continue the evolution that was Faye's shitty life.
She laughs a little, the sound coming out half-hysterical and shaky. A few days ago she'd been digging around Spike's room (Jet was safely off-ship grocery shopping) for a cigarette and had instead found a battered old book of Roman history stashed behind Spike's bed. She'd read it out of boredom, but mostly out of the sheer novelty of Spike owning a hardcover. One of the pages had been dog-eared, and on that page there'd been an image of a goddess: a woman, blindfolded and balancing on a sphere, scales in one hand, cornucopia in the other.
The picture had been labeled Fortuna, and she had first laughed her ass off imagining the stupid asshole finding that inspirational, or ironic, or whatever the hell his twisted mind decided to come up with. Then she'd sobered very quickly when she realized how very…easily the image explained her own life.
She'd always had a notion that somebody up there had it in for her, and now she had her validation. Whenever it came to Faye Valentine, Lady Luck just keeps falling off the ball and poking herself in the eye with the pointy end of her scales.
To put it simply: Faye just isn't the luckiest card in the draw.
She rummages around under her seat, looking for her pack of cigarettes, and comes up with a broken nail file, half a cigar, and a fair bit of lint. She stares, mutters, "What the hell," tosses the trash back under the chair, and lights up.
It isn't fair, she thinks. But then, when has fate ever been? She's stopped wasting time wondering who she was long ago, stopped trying to hang onto threads of a person she'd never really been in the first place. Living with Spike has taught her a lesson, one she's been learning the hard way ever since she'd been dragged out of her cold sleep:
You take your cake and eat it too, because lord knows when your next slice of sweet, sugary deliciousness will come around.
She takes a good long drag, savoring the complex flavor, before blowing a couple of smoke rings just to prove she can. Spike hadn't understood this. He lived and ate and slept and caught bounties, then did it all again when the next day arrived. He'd argued and fought and yelled, but with a glazed look in his eyes, as if torn between one world and the next. She's never been able to see the appeal of living in yesterday, of walking forward but looking over one shoulder all the while.
But then, who would Spike be without his past? Faye isn't stupid: she knows part of what had intrigued her about him was the fact that he was a broken man, shattered once, twice, a dozen times, then put back together with yarn and glue. Or chewing gum and dental floss. Every woman would have the same urge to hide him away under her pillow and never let go. Unfortunately for her, that asshole was just prickly enough, and she, just proud enough, that she'd never followed through on the desire.
And now he was dead. Which brings her back to the whole 'living a life worth dying for' thing. Which just makes her angry, and a little sad. She takes another drag, and watches the smoke curl around itself. She regrets that she'd never taken advantage of her good fortune, but that is really what it comes down to, isn't it?
Regret.
"You never know what you have until it's gone," she tells the planet sardonically, unsurprised when it didn't reply. She takes one last puff of her cigar, snuffs it out on the console, grips the controls, and starts navigating through the junk towards the surface.
With the sun's rays peeking around the horizon, the descending ship turns into a streak of fire. She doesn't hesitate, doesn't stop to look back, just keeps moving forward, because doing anything different gets you killed.
She pulls a shit-eating grin out from somewhere and plasters it across her face as she fights against gravity to not get smeared across the ground like so much Faye-pudding. This is the smile that gets her into more scraps than not—the smile that pissed off Jet and Spike and made Ed laugh and clap her hands in delight.
This is her life. She'll fix it, or fuck it up, or end up fat and married with 2.5 children and a white picket fence. Her choice, her call, and she'll be damned if something like her insecurities or her rotten luck ruin her chance to have a chance. A chance to change. To grow.
Suddenly, the urge to come back to Earth doesn't seem quite so strange anymore, and is starting to look more appealing by the minute.
Smirk still firmly in place, Faye murmurs mostly to herself, and partly to the cosmos, "Isn't this just the perfect weather for a flight?"
She imagines that the answer is a unanimous and resounding yes.
Jet knows the moment he walks through the bay door that the shrew-woman has left. There are clues scattered here and there, not least of them being the fact that the Red Tail is gone from its spot in the hangar. The sweet-sharp smell of woman is gone, replaced by a coldness he'd all but forgotten in the whirlwind life with three other people and a dog.
Some small part of him is cheering with joy that he might have his sweet, blessed solitude back, but most of him is just depressed that the last of his makeshift family has departed for greener pastures.
It'd always been a touch-and-go situation with his crew-mates. They hadn't been tied down like he was with things like home and living and responsibility. But yet, that didn't mean he couldn't hope they'd find some measure of belonging on the Bebop, like he had.
He walks down the hallway and past the living room (doesn't even glance around for fear of seeing a ghost) and into the kitchen, setting the two bags of groceries down on the counter. He begings to put the various foodstuffs away, mind carefully blank. Bread goes in this cupboard; eggs in the fridge. Bell peppers are set by the stove, along with some onions. When he gets to the fruit, efficient hands pause, and he ends up staring dumbly at the little bag's contents.
Plums. Faye'd bitched about nutrition and diet and scurvy for so long that he'd decided on this grocery trip to just give in and get the damn woman what she wanted. "I can't believe you'd want a beautiful woman like me to end up with rotting teeth and open sores," she'd whined, and he'd muttered something vague about vitamin C tablets and picky women, pretending not to pay her any attention.
He'd listened, though, like he always did, and had picked up a bag of plums on the way out of the market. Not much point in them now, though.
Leaving his chore unfinished, Jet turns around and marches straight out of the kitchen into the cockpit. He tries not to think about it, but he does, and now it is time for forgetting. The rest of the groceries can wait.
He rummages around underneath the console by the co-pilot's chair, pulling out a bottle of brandy he'd stashed when Spike and Faye weren't looking. Sitting himself carefully among the controls, he stares at his reflection before looking through the glass at the icy blackness of space.
There's been days where he's felt all his 36 years creeping up behind him like some menacing Boogieman of his childhood nightmares. Those days are coming more frequently, and by and by, Jet's come to the opinion that he's gotten old. Fact is, he's just too old to deal with those hooligans and their antics. He tries to console himself with the thought that he'll never have to again, but that just brings all kinds of melancholy on him.
Jet wrenches the bottle open indelicately, but pauses before taking a swig. He isn't just drinking for himself, much as he'd like to: he's drinking for Spike and his fucked-up ending, as long ago as that is. He's drinking for Ed and Ein, wherever they are, searching for a place called home. He's drinking for Faye, the last of his strays to go, drifting to god-knows-where and looking for hints about her lost past. He's drinking for them all, and he'll pay them their due.
"Cheers, guys," he says to his reflection, mind's eye painting them in beside him in varying states of chaos, raising the bottle. Smiling at his memories, drinking to his friends, he forgets everything a little while longer.
Ein is not the sort of dog to stop and question whenever something smells fishy. Except for that one time with the can of tuna that silly Faye-woman had tried to eat. He warned her, he did, he was a good dog and tried to let her know that it was most definitely off, but she never listened. Karma comes in all shapes and sizes, he supposes.
But when Ed leaves the Bebop, leaves their own territory smelling sweet and musty like bouquets of dying flowers, he knows something's wrong. He's a smart dog; he knows when his humans are feeling bad.
He follows behind his Ed-person, trying to stay aware of everything and everyone they're passing, because Ed-person is too wrapped up in whatever she's singing about to make sure they're not walking into a situation. The streets of the tiny Mars town they've arrived in (and wasn't that a fun ride on the hover-bus, with the wind in his face and the two physics professors arguing quantum theory a couple of seats down) is quaint, sure, but he's been chased and hounded—he laughs with a loll of his tongue—far too long to stop his vigilance.
Not to mention the business that Spike-man got involved in, with those suits. The possibility that Spike-man's ridiculous feud with the mob might somehow drag his Ed-person down is low, less than 4.27%, but Ein hasn't survived for long by ignoring improbabilities. He factors it into his long-term plans for survival and comfort, and settles his hindquarters firmly beside Ed-person, who crouches at the mouth of an alley to whip out her laptop and bash at it viciously.
First on his list is food. Ed-person is growling in time with her stomach, and while he can go for a while without a decent meal, growing humans can't, so it's off to the dumpster with him.
He trots off down the alleyway, hops lightly between several conveniently placed crates, and lands in a pile of rancid trash. Most of it is unfit for human consumption, but not his, he thinks, as he scarfs down half a hamburger from a ripped white bag. Somehow he manages to come across a small tub of what smells like kimchi fried rice. Too bad he doesn't have opposable thumbs, though, because all he can do is grip it between his teeth and take it back to his person.
"Ein-puppy, what'd you bring me?" Ed-person squeals when he finally manages to drag her attention away from her computer long enough to notice him. "Looks like…" she trails off, struggling and biting at the seal until it pops open, "…kimchi for dinner! Yay! One, two, three—" she sings, counting in Korean, whipping out her favorite chopsticks, and digging in.
Ein rolls his eyes, waits a few seconds to make sure her meal holds her attention, shuffles to her computer. Pawing a few buttons, he starts darting through the files she's left open. Shipping schedules, itineraries, copies of receipts, invoices, bills, private emails, internal memos—
He blinks. Neurons fire, vague connections appear. A pattern aligns. Conclusions form.
Ein smiles a doggy smile, barks, and closes the laptop, ignoring Ed-person's squawks of dismay and the pieces of rice and kimchi that she flings onto his ear. It's time to go. He winds through her legs and pushes her to movement, hoping to get lost even further before they bunk down for the night.
Improbabilities have an odd way of becoming certainties, Ein knows, knows that randomness isn't something for which any being can plan. If he were human, he might have the hubris to think he could play the odds—like the Spike-man did so many times, and look how that turned out—but Ein isn't human. He's just able to see how chance whispers through his humans' lives.
And in this instance, his belief in chance, in tracking the possible-probable-likely, might be able to fix the smell of sadness lingering around Ed-person and the rest of the Bebop.