Prompt Three: Consideration (Prelude)

"I needed you to please give my reflection a break from the face it's seeing now. Ooh darling, gahhlee, would you mind giving my reflection a break from the pain it's feeling now?"

Characters: Faye, Edward

Rating: K+

Genre: Friendship, Humor

Summary: It's Friday night and everyone knows that this calls for girl time on the Bebop; some nails will be painted, but a whole lot of divulging will ensue. It's all about Earth, happiness, and a friendship through the bond of a most unlikely pair.

Session Three: Consideration—A Prelude

They sat together like two old souls who knew each other for the better part of their lives. Basking in a familiarity only two women bred from the highest level of dysfunctional possible could achieve.

Basketcases—the both of them, so dysfunctional, so fascinatingly morbid, that it was the stuff of legends.

A cowgirl in her mid-twenties who stood the test of time of some poorly contrived science-fiction-cum-twenty-first-century-blockbuster-hit, but here's the sad twist, this was no mere movie for Faye Valentine—this was reality. And here beside her sat her genius cowgirl prodigé and hacker aficionado whose story was just as sick, if not more malignantly twisted as her mentor and de-facto den mother. Edward Wong Hau Pepelu Tivrusky IV was no average prepubescent when pitted against her predecessor, for all things worth, Edward was just as much a legend-in-the-making as her own dear Faye-Faye.

Therefore, it would be no surprise that these two would click faster than a lock and hatch, buckled up and ready to rocket past you faster than you could say the word "parsecs." It would seem that the powers that be had deemed it perfectly fine for these two to be practically a match made in heaven, of the rapport kind that is. Polar opposites, two sides of the same coin, yet different pieces altogether. That's what Edward Wong Hau Pepelu Tivrusky IV and Faye Valentine were—diamonds in the rough to put it more aptly.

And they sat together, basking in their long withstanding familiarity, with Faye hunched over in concentration as she put every bit of her meticulous attention into the simple art of uncapping a bottle of nail polish and dutifully painting each and every one of the teenager before her's nails a glimmering dusty rose pink.

Yes, this was the stuff of legends on the bebop or more so, the stuff of tradition. Because every Friday night at exactly 6:30 p.m., Faye would sit herself down with the only other woman on this God awful testosterone-filled ship and paint Edward's nails. It was a form of bonding. It was friendship. It was an unspoken bond between a woman and a girl. It was a ritual.

"Say, Ed, I never got to ask you..." Faye looked up from adding a thin layer of Perfect Polished Pink onto the younger girl's left pinky toe. "Where'd you come from? I mean, no, what's your story?"

The ginger-haired hacker could only stare at her in slight bemusement. "Eh?"

"I mean...you know, how was it like for you growing up, er, I mean... How was earth like since the whole environmental deterioration and all that?" She continued awkwardly not quite sure why she had the need to bring intimate details up now. Faye couldn't possibly know why she decided to mess up the entire status quo of their weekly ritual, but something deep within had egged her on, like a little candlelight flame waiting for a flint and spark. She guessed that the question was the spark, she herself had been the flint.

"Well, if you really wanted to hear about where Edward comes from Faye-Faye, I have no other choice but to tell you!" Edward squealed with joy. Suddenly her face fell," But beware, it shall be a long, long, long, long, long, long tale."

Faye crossed her arms, a challenging smirk played upon her countenance. "Alright then, kid. I'm game."

"Weeeeellll," she leaned over. "I came fluttering in from Neverland, time can never stop me no, no, no, no. Father-person said I fell out of the sky of Edward's mama's loins, heh, as Francoise. They were both geologists, but nowadays papa's a map drawer, or cartographer as he likes to put it. Mama fell asleep when I was born, never woke up. Thus, Siniz Hesap Lütfen Appledelhi dropped his baby Francoise down in the Catholic Church Orphanage where she would be raised with the wolves."

"Huh, really? Have you been raised in an orphanage all your life until you met us?"

"Nope, nope, nope. Francoise left the church one day, too tired of running with the wolves. She became the Great Edward Wong Hau Pepelu Tivrusky IV! She picked up Ol' Tomato played a little with the art of encoding and voilà—the legend was born! And that is how you found me, I came riding on a pale white horse handing out highs to less fortunate. If a big bad corporation wanted corrupted files to be erased from the galactic database, Edward was there for the taking!"

"In that you mean—?"

"Let's just say, if a big ol' conglomerate or syndicate was running its course too quick, most of the time it would need someone to cover their tracks. Edward did just that. Let me cover your shit in glitter and I can make it gold! Lots and lots of the stuff! The art of encoding can get you far, and far and far, and beyond the imagination!"

"You did corporate dirty work?" Faye gasped in feigned astonishment. It would have been no surprise either way.

"Yes, yes, and yes! Heard you're tryna' sell your soul? Edward has the solution to your problem! Word on the street says you've been running it low lately? Not a problem! I can fix anything and everything all for a little reimbursement of ca-ching, ca-ching!" The girl laughed as she rubbed her thumbs together.

"You worked as an undercover reconnaissance gatekeeper, I'm not all that surprised," Faye laughed airily. "But, I do advise you, please run it back, run it all back for me...because I want to know what your childhood was like. How was it like to be a child of Earth, y'know in the new millennium, one of the very last of your kind?"

Edward brightened at this, leaning back in the chair. "Ooooohhh, that's what you wanted to know! Well, Edward doesn't remember much now, but... I do have some really, really, really vivid images that I can remember—just the small things. Like the scent of the sea, the dusty roads, perfumed pillars of the broken city structures. That's what Faye-Faye wants to hear, right?"

"Ah, y-yeah..." She replied, almost slightly embarrassed of what she was inquiring about. "You really know how to read a gal, don't ya' Ed?"

"Part of the charm my dear Faye-Faye!" She beamed and then her face fell into a more somber expression. "Edward knows you miss Earth, don't you Faye-Faye?"

The violet-haired cowgirl could only sigh in forlorn as she finished the last of Edward's toes, wondering why woe was her and what had she done to have slighted the powers that be enough to deal her with the short end of the stick. Memory be damned.

"Yeah, I miss it. I mean, how would you feel if the majority of your life was unceremoniously taken away from you? That's a natural, God-given right if you ask me!" She huffed.

"Edward understands and if you must know, even though climate change has left the planet bonkers, Earth was and still is inherently the same," the teenager said evenly with her once playful tone sounding close to something almost normal. "When we last went to Earth together you said everything looked broken, buuut, that is not so! Earth is Earth. The winds are the same, they're cool and just as every bit relaxing as they were hundreds and thousands of years ago! The waters are just the same, salty and with a hint of musk—Cleopatra probably smelled the very same sea air two millenniums ago, and that's just fine! Even if things change, everything stays right where you left it. Ever so slightly, daily and nightly, in many ways everything stays!"

A moment of silence passed between the two women, a quiescent ambiance, the candlelight spark had blown away. This silence was that of a mutual sense of understanding, one that had crept between that medium of familial affection and empathy, enough for both of them to simply take it as it was. Faye had her shortcomings, Edward had her eccentricities, and that's just how they liked it. They were simply a pair of one-of-a-kind girls stuck in the middle of a generically-run galaxy—too old to breed anything as climactic as the age-old process of life and death thrown into the pot of humanity's everlasting plight. It was just Faye and Edward, ready to take on the universe, ready to bear their own burdens upon each other's shoulders so they could carry the weight of it all altogether until the end of their short or perhaps long-lived camaraderie.

With one last smile, Faye stood up, brushing her shorts off of some imperceptible dust she could only make out through habit. "Thanks, Ed. You really do know how to read a gal... It used to be when I looked outside my window, I couldn't get no peace of mind. Always been a do-things-my-own-way type of gal, but... You really helped out along the way. You're just too good to me, you know that, kid?"

Edward smiled a smile that had reached out towards her eyes encompassing her face in its entirety. White teeth and bright hazel eyes gleamed with a knowing glow, one that sparked with embers of both down-right candor and a handful of understanding. It was the only perfect response Faye could ever think of.

"You're welcome, Faye-Faye," she winked. "You just keep busting those heads and I'll be there to tidy up the mess—we're a pair, us two, for the world is a spooky, spooky place!"

"Yeah, it is."

Yes, they were just two sides of the same tarnished coin.

A/N: This chapter was based off the song Consideration by Rihanna (feat. SZA). I thought it'd be nice to incorporate some friendly elements involving or favorite cowgirl and our favorite hacker turned Bebop member. This is a little prelude before we further explore some of Faye's background in the next installment.