Two: One of These Days
What if I wait around forever?
Would it come back around here for me?
Or would I waste whatever's left of this life
Wishing for things I think I need?
- Gavin Mikhail
Faye had slept so hard that night that by the time she had awoke, she'd nearly forgotten Maxwell all together. She was still a bit hazy from her dreams about silver hammers and Kings and crazy little girls named Ed. When she dragged herself into the main room, she discovered the boy on the couch, out cold. He was squeaky clean and had used Jet's deodorant and even a sprit of her perfume. Apparently he hadn't bathed in awhile and was quite grateful.
Considering the water heater had been broken for three months, he didn't seem to mind that the shower was freezing cold.
Faye yawned and stretched, crossing to the refrigerator and pulling a bowl of leftover bell peppers and beef (minus the beef) from within. She'd go buy food later today while Jet was fueling up. She popped the lid off and dug into the bowl with a pair of chopsticks. They weren't very good cold, but she'd grown quite used to the taste.
Sitting there, watching the boy while she ate, she took in his facial features. He wasn't terribly attractive or terribly ugly… his nose was a bit large for his face, and the skin across his nose and cheeks was slightly reddened from boyish acne. He'd washed his hair with too much conditioner, or maybe just too many times, because it hung a bit greasy over his face. His hands and feet were too big for his skinny limbs. He had long fingers, like that of a piano player, and even a long bath didn't get all the dirt out from under his nails. There were pale scars on his arms and the visible part of his chest, and a faint bruise on his neck in the shape of hands, as if he had been strangled not too terribly long ago. The boy kept his gun in the front of his pants.
He stirred while she observed, sitting up and yawning, arms stretching high over his head. His teeth were slightly yellowed from prolonged tobacco use. She wondered how long he'd smoked for and if Jet had been the first person to stop him from doing so.
Rubbing one eye, he looked at Faye and waved. "Yo."
She jumped, thinking that she'd slipped back into her memories for a moment. "Hey. Sleep well?"
"Awesome," He replied, standing and rolling his shoulders. "You?"
She shrugged. "So, did Jet come bother you to get up and make yourself useful yet?"
The boy laughed, looking through the fridge. "Yeah, kind of. He was grunting and grumbling as if that was gonna wake me up. I've got to tell you though, I was way too tired to be snapped out of it. I think that's the first full night sleep I've gotten in over a week."
"What kind of life have you been involved in? Jeez, even I never had that kind of trouble… well, not really."
"Yeah, but you're a pretty girl," Max replied, turning around and shutting the door with his foot when he realized it was empty. "You can seduce yourself into getting whatever you want if you find the right guy, right? I could never do that." He returned to his spot on the couch.
Faye rolled her eyes. "I may have been able to do something like that back in my prime, but it rarely ever led to the best results. If a man can be seduced, then he's not to be trusted."
"Any man can be seduced."
"Exactly," Faye replied, crossing her legs. She watched the boy eye them as she did so, apparently hungry for a little more than food. She always did feel she had great legs.
"Can you seduce Jet?" He asked.
"I could if I wanted to, but Jet doesn't have anything I want… You know, that I don't already have."
"It is a little weird then, isn't it?" He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. "I mean, you and Jet are the only ones on this ship, and I can tell you've been together for a long time. You guys never fooled around or anything?"
"Jet and I know each other too well to be interested in that kind of thing," She replied, pulling a cigarette from the pack on the table. "We would rather sit around and sulk about how miserable our lives are rather than screw around in the hopes of finding something. We both know there's nothing for us to get from it other than awkwardness and arguments. I think… we'd ruin something that way."
"I bet he doesn't feel that way," Max laughed, tossing her his lighter. "All men can be seduced, after all. So you never once thought about it?"
"Jet's not my type."
"You like young, rich guys?"
"I wouldn't complain," She shrugged again, "but from what I've discovered, I fall for men that I shouldn't have… and in one case, one I couldn't have."
Realizing she'd said too much, she swallowed and lit her cigarette.
"I bet the same kind of men are attracted to you too, huh?" Max grinned.
She was thankful that he didn't ask. "You don't know the half of it, kid. The whole universe is filled with nothing but users and abusers. They will take you for all you can get and leave you hanging out to dry when it's over with. The first rule of bounty hunting training is 'Don't Trust Anyone,' you got that?"
"Got it."
It was at this moment that Jet entered with a sigh. "What are you two sitting around for? We've got work to do!"
"Like what?" Max asked, seeming to be genuinely curious.
"Shopping, cleaning, cooking, fueling up all the ships!" He named off, counting on the fingers of his robotic arm.
"All the ships?" Max asked. "I thought there was only this one."
"Well," Jet hesitated, realizing what he'd said, "there are mono-racers in the hangar."
"Really? That's so cool!" He leaped over the couch to immediately go see, but Jet caught him by the back of his shirt.
"That place is off limits to a wet-behind-the-ears beginner like yourself. If you're going to stay on my ship, you're going to follow that rule and all the others."
"Man, you really do sound like a cop."
Jet released him, causing him to stumble a little. "You need to understand that this isn't a game, kid. You've joined up with us, and you're going to do what we say."
"Yes, sir, but what if Faye tells me something different than you do?"
"Then do what I say."
"Hey!" Faye complained, marching up the steps.
"We only have enough money for a couple of days of groceries if we plan to fuel up, so be thrifty, Faye, and go get them."
"I'll go too," Max offered.
"Fine then."
"Hey, what's the big deal, Jet? I'm supposed to go grocery shopping and baby-sit? I'm not your wife."
"You brought him on, so he's your responsibility."
"But he does what you say."
"Exactly."
Faye pouted.
Maxwell had dug an army green jacket from his bag and yanked it on. It had an old, musty smell to it. "Don't worry, Faye. I won't cramp your style or anything. I'll be so good that you won't even know I'm there. You can just give me bounty hunting pointers."
"Yeah, I totally say those to myself all the time," Faye droned, glaring at Jet. "Anything in particular you want me to pick up, Mr. Boss Man?"
Jet shoved a list into her finely manicured hands. "If you can't afford all of it, figure out what we need more."
She grumbled and disappeared through the exit, Max following like the lost puppy he sort of was.
Jet leaned up against the side of his Hammerhead while he allowed the tank to fill. He humored himself at the fact that over the years he'd picked up a bad habit of smoking while pumping gas. It was something he'd scolded Spike for doing at least a dozen times.
"If he was here with me, I wouldn't hear the end of it," Jet said quietly to himself. Of course, he wasn't there, so there was no way he could have known. It was a disappointing thought.
The first few months after that day had been pretty rough. Neither Jet nor Faye felt like hunting and only did so when they were completely broke. There were days when they went without food, sometimes several in a row. Jet pawned quite a few of his weapons and tools just to keep them alive. He returned to hunting after a few weeks, true, but Faye… no, she didn't recover quite so quickly. She was in denial for the first few hours, claiming that they'd have to go scrape him off the pavement and patch him up like they always did. It was hard to watch when they came across his body. Not only was Spike's corpse permanently etched painfully into Jet's memory, but perhaps more painfully was Faye's expression when they discovered it.
She had screamed at him then, kicking him hard in the ribs. "Get up, you fucker! Get up!" Her voice had reached a high-pitched desperation he had never heard from her, and he couldn't pretend not to know why. Spike and Faye had had a connection that Jet could never fully understand or obtain. He and Faye were never as close as she and Spike, even if they all argued all the time. They'd paired off pretty quickly into Spike and Faye, Jet and Ed, or Spike and Jet, Faye and Ed. It was never Faye and Jet.
He understood her screaming. The poor thing. Without her family, without Ed, Spike was all she had left to hang onto.
She stood there screaming and crying, fists clenched so tightly that she drew blood with her nails and caused her knuckles to go white. It took her a good twenty minutes to calm down enough for Jet to drag her away.
Spike was buried in an unmarked grave because they couldn't afford a tombstone. If they'd known what had become of Julia, perhaps they would have buried them together, but there was no way for them to know. The only ones there were the two of them and Doohan who made no effort to look upset but offered to repair anything wrong with their ships free of charge. Jet remembered thinking how he felt Spike deserved a much bigger ceremony, but he was just being sentimental in the end. Ninety-nine percent of the people Spike met in his life were adversaries or in jail or dead (or a mixture).
Faye had walked away, saying nothing, and Jet was left alone at the grave for a long moment of time.
He remembered it vividly, as if he was reenacting it at that exact moment.
Jet stood there before that plot of ground, staring at the dirt that his friend was hidden deep under, destined to become one with it, grow grass and soon disappear without even a tombstone to be remembered by. He remembered this and how he had mumbled, "You were a lot more trouble than you were worth, you know? Always destroying everything and wasting money. Always complaining. You were nothing but a thug, weren't you? From the day I met you, you were always the same. Never made any strives to improve, never did anything. Just slept or complained. That's all you did."
He didn't cry.
At least, that's what he told anyone who asked.
The tank had been filled without his notice. He shook himself out of his memory and removed the nozzle. As he returned the cap to its proper place, he remembered the following days from the funeral.
Faye had slept in Spike's room for a month, and when she was awake, she spent most of the time at the foot of his bed, knees pulled up to her chest, sometimes talking to him as if he was there, sometimes completely silent. Despite the fact that he was obviously gone, Jet himself found it hard to believe. Spike's ghost lingered in every part of the Bebop. His cigarette smoke, his shadow lounging on the mustard colored couch, his voice echoing "Yo," against the walls whenever Jet stepped into a room… Hell, he'd see his strange, moss-colored hair in the leaves of his bonsai trees.
There was one difference though… that aching loneliness that hung over the Bebop like a cloud. Neither ever seemed to be happy again after Spike got himself killed over an old grudge and a dead woman. Maybe it was just bitterness that had settled into their bones when they realized the game they had been playing had been lost.
But when Faye brought that boy onto the ship… her face was brighter than he remembered seeing in a long time. All the wrinkles around her mouth and eyes seemed to have vanished.
Sure, the boy's personality was tremendously different from their old friend (at least so far), but the resemblance was nearly uncanny. He had those same long limbs and broad shoulders. He smiled the same lopsided smile. His eyes were the same color brown. Even his voice had a similar "whatever happens, happens" lilt to it. It wasn't any wonder why she'd had him come back with her.
It probably wasn't healthy to replace a memory with a new person. Faye would most likely end up hurting the boy with her form of therapy, but Jet barely knew the boy and honestly didn't care at the moment. Faye and he were all the other had, and if someone had to suffer a little so that they could be happy, he felt that he had the right to be a little selfish. He'd been selfless for so long and nothing good had come of it.
He had returned the Hammerhead to the recently fueled up Bebop by this point and looked over the ships. Everything had been refueled except for the Swordfish II. He had no need to fill it. It still had fuel in it from over ten years ago. No one had driven it since Spike died, except for Jet, of course, flying it back to the ship.
Jet patted its faded paintjob affectionately. He'd kept it up all these years, just in case the lunkhead reappeared in the doorway, acting as though he'd never left. "I know you want to fly again," he spoke to the ship as if it was a person, "but it just isn't my place."
Jet's meager savings plus the money Faye had snagged off that bounty were enough to make a difference in their eating situation. While they were at the grocery store, Faye even started eyeing some beef.
"What are you looking at?" Max asked, peering over her shoulder.
"I think we have enough for this, right?" She looked at him, and he checked the basket full of food. He stared at it for a long time before looking up.
"With tax… you'll go over by two Woolongs, but if you put back the large vegetable oil bottle and replace it with a medium sized one, you should be okay."
Faye stared at him for a moment. "You're good with numbers, aren't you?"
"I guess." There was a nonchalance to his voice that seemed ever so slightly suspicious, but she didn't question it.
"Well, do that," She replied, handing him the bottle, and he obediently wandered off to find it. He had his other hand in his back pocket.
She looked back to the meat and picked it up, placing it in the basket. She was looking forward to dinner that night. If there was one thing Jet could do, it was that he could cook. Everything had been plain and flavorless most of the time, but frankly, they couldn't afford the spices. She made sure to pick up some of those. Cheese too. And she'd made a stop at the liquor store and picked up a bottle of wine. It hadn't been on the list, but she figured she'd splurge a little bit since she'd caught the guy.
That was when Maxwell reappeared, walking briskly with the vegetable oil, smile missing. He grabbed her wrist sharply and dragged her to the empty check-out line. "Hey, now, what's the big deal?" Faye asked, wrenching her wrist away from him.
"Nothing," He replied, not looking at her. "Just felt like we needed to get back soon." He physically tensed and turned his face away completely.
Faye glanced over her shoulder to see a tall, bald man in dark purple shades, dressed in an all black suit except for his purple tie. He was sporting a silver lip ring and heading straight towards the man selling cigarettes. Before she could get a good look at him, she was pulled away and out into the parking lot. Max was carrying both bags of groceries in one arm and staring at the street. Faye could barely keep up with his pace.
"Hey, what the hell? Let go of me! What's the rush?"
"Nothing! I just want to get back to the ship, get something to eat is all. That's all."
Faye glared at him, not willing to let it go. "Bullshit. Who was that guy?"
"What guy? I didn't see any guy."
Faye glared at Max. Max grinned back sheepishly before shoving one of the bags of groceries into her arms.
As soon as the groceries were put away, Max leaped over the railing and took up residence in his spot on the couch. "Mission accomplished," He exhaled, all too willing to settle in for a nap.
"No, no, mission not accomplished, not yet," Faye complained, thumping him on the head. "You can't fool me. Who was that guy back at the grocery store, huh? Tell me!"
He pouted, digging a cigarette out of his pocket. "I honestly have no idea what you're talking about. What guy?"
She leaned over the side of the couch, locking eyes with him. "You know, the bald guy with the purple sunglasses. You flinched when you saw him. You were scared of him."
"I wasn't scared of him."
They stared at each other until Faye could no longer stand looking at his eyes. She shouted, punched the couch and turned away. "Agh! You are so annoying, you little brat! God… you're just like him, never saying anything, always leaving everyone guessing!"
Max's face peeked up from the couch now. "Just like who?"
Faye looked back at him, realizing what she had said. "Well… tell me who baldy is, and I'll tell you what you want to know."
He shrugged. "I didn't want to know all that badly anyways."
Before Faye could retort, Jet entered. "All fueled up," he said, spinning his keys around one finger.
"Excellent," Max replied, blowing smoke rings in the air.
"I thought I told you not to smoke!" Jet growled.
"No, you said that I shouldn't smoke, not that I am not allowed," Max responded, laughing slightly. "I mean, I've been puffing on these things since I was like… nine."
Jet took his cigarette anyway. "So, run into any problems shopping?"
Faye looked at Max, and the boy's expression was unreadable. As tempted as she was to tell Jet about the bald man… it felt almost like her own mystery to solve. If she told Jet that Max was keeping secrets, it was quite possible that the boy would be kicked to the curb.
"Nope," Max replied before she could say anything. "Everything was smooth sailing. Did you expect any less?"
"Yeah, a lot less, actually."
Faye glared at the boy but didn't let Jet see. Max didn't seem phased.
He was unbreakable, apparently. She'd need to work harder to see if she could prove that theory true or not. Too bad Faye wasn't the type to do much work.