A/N: In a perfect world, I'd own Bebop and somewhere in the show I'd be there! Well, unfortunately, that's not how the world works. Oh well. C'est la vie! Enjoy!

Prologue

One week before Ed leaves

Spike Spiegel was never one to claim belief in anything. Sure, he'd studied martial arts almost as if his life depended on it. Sometimes, his life actually did depend on his dedication to his training. But nothing had ever really made a difference.

Until her.

Lately, she had been popping in and out of Spike's mind with every thought. Silly things like seeing teenage lovers chase each other around made him regret the dream never ending. Since refueling on Athenti Citi, about fifty kilometers from Tharsis, Spike had been unable to sleep. Fed up, Spike went to work out and popped in a disc that Julia gave him years ago. The pop singer, a 20th century superstar Spike had long ago forgotten the name of, sweetly sang the one verse that meant so much more than it used to:

Love, oh my love,

I wonder sometimes

Were you just a dream.

I sit in the dark

Wondering if our paths

Will ever cross again.

Oh God, I need to know.

"Where are you," Spike thought to himself, punching the image of a man who was his best friend four years ago and who now wanted him dead.

As Spike calmed, he began thinking of the many women, beautiful and otherwise, he'd met since his "death." Katerina. Twinkle Maria Murdock. VT. The lady at the Pet Shop. Stella. Alisa. Meifa. Electra. Faye. Each woman brought back memories of how he met her and what he'd done to keep up with her. Katerina was dead, shot by the ISSP. Twinkle, as far as Spike knew, had been turned into a monkey. He called VT from time to time, especially when he needed help tracking a bounty's location. Spike was there the day Stella was released from the hospital and has gone to see her every once in a while since. He lost track of Meifa and Alisa.

Then there were Electra and Faye. The two combined, Spike thought, would make the perfect woman. Both had their good and bad sides, sure. Electra was too open to taking orders, though was, Spike had to admit, a bad ass that even he came to admire. Faye, on the other hand, refused to take even advice most of the time, though was tough enough to keep up with the likes of him. As much as he didn't want to admit it, he cared deeply for both women.

"But neither of them can replace Julia," Spike thought, relaxing on the ratty old yellow couch in the makeshift den. The all-too familiar bumps and stains reminded him of past joys and pains, from missions racking in loads of cash to failed escapades that usually ended with some sort of body injury that would require days of befriending the couch. These same bumps finally relaxed him to sleep.

All he could see was blue. To him, the dream was a nightmare that he'd faced again and again for the past three years. There was a gun lying on a table near a woman. She was crying, not because of the gun itself, but what she was told to do with it. There was no way she could handle the task she was given and she knew it. So, she decided to run. No one, not even the person she was protecting, would know where to find her.

The dream skipped to a rainy night. He was walking the street alone with rose petals marking his path when he noticed something on the ground. Something white and torn. He looked up, curious who put it there and why. He noticed a chair next to a window on the fourth floor and began to understand, though it hurt like Hell. He knew then that the dream would keep going, but there was more to the story than he would know for a long time, if at all.

Just like other similar nights, Spike woke up in a cold sweat. He sat up and held his head in his hands. "What the Hell happened to us," he asked himself. "To me? To you?" He then laughed to himself. "Maybe I'm not meant to be with anyone."

Little did he know that someone was watching the whole episode and trying not to say anything or cry. That, after all, is a weakness that can't be seen by the likes of Spike Spiegel…