Disclaimer: As ya all know CB is not mine.
NOTE: Yeah, uh well. This chapter is kind of freaky. I have an idea but I have no idea how I am going to put it in words and I'm so damn tired. But thanks everyone for your reviews, they mean alllllloooottttt to me. LOL. Oh well, enjoy this, and I'll get the next chapter up soooooonn!!!

Chapter 9


Peace. No more hope. Are you happy your pride has been knocked down to it's knees? This is what you wanted, to not feel anything, not understand, just live in silence forever. Are you satisfied that you have found death at last?

She opened her eyes. She floated in space, breathing was hard and coldness etched at her skin. The coldness wanted her but she no longer wanted to receive it. The stars stared at her with cold silver reluctance, as if welcoming a stranger in thier embrace.
No, I am not satisfied.

She closed her eyes again the coldness was getting to her and she didn't like it. Then the voice came, her voice and her attitude, her sound that wasn't her at all. "What do you want, Faye? Have you found what you want yet?"

Yes. She fought to keep her eyes closed, scared that if she opened them something would be there waiting for her, waiting to take her into death. Fear fountained from the truth that she really didn't want to say good-bye yet. She wanted to keep living to feel the only good feeling she felt in a long time. Her love for Spike.

"What do you want, Faye?" The voice caressed her, warmed her through the cold that sought to erase her from existence.

What do you want? She replied question for question.

"I have told you what I want. I want to live, I want to love, to be loved." The voice was sad, painless but hurting. It hinted reluctance, urgency, despair. "What do you want, Faye?"

Stop asking me that! Stop asking me everything! She cried. Why did she sound so depseperate to erase what made her want to cry with happiness? I know what I want but I can't have it! And that was why she was desperate to hold on to a life that was throwing her away with thoughtlessness. She couldn't have what she wanted and it was more than welcomed to ablige her with patronizing fate. Faye could feel tears sting her eyes with realization and horase depression. And the same old answer brought back, the same old pain that the voice had to have understood if it was she who spoke. Why answer herself if she already knew the answer?

"Faye,..."

She could feel the sobs coming, the utter loneliness she felt when she thought of what she wanted.
I want Spike. I want him to love me. I want to have a life that involves no walking away, no turning away, no dying. I want a life I can't have because I've lived too much to believe in innocent dreams. I want to forget all that makes my own dreams impossible. Aren't you happy she wanted to shout to the cold nothingness around her. Are you satisfied by my suffereing?

And then she saw Spike's sarcastic smile, his beautiful multicolor eyes, his green hair, his lanky form. It all looked so much more promising than death and it hurt to think that she would part from the beauty and love he gave to her when she dreamed. But all the same she accepted death around the last instant, knowing it was inevitable. Then she wasn't suffering only longing and desiring the temptation that would never be fulfilled.

She had a chose in the midst of that coldness. Choose life or death. Live or to die. To be chained or be forever free.

In that moment she chose Spike over Death and Death chose damnination over survival.


There was silence. She could feel the anger, the mixed feelings that were quickly turning to rage hit her hard as she opened her eyes angrily. She wasn't dying without a fight, and Death wasn't going to win because Life played it's best hand of misery. She was going to beat the odds she couldn't beat before, and she was going to laugh at everything that had held her down on the pedestal of victory.

It was time for round two.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~


He saw her open her eyes and all he wanted to do was take her in his arms and show how much he was worried for her, how scared he had been that he had lost her. All he wanted to do was scold himself for feeling so much for her. It felt wrong in a way to feel so right.

She looked through sleepy and painfilled eyes, her body feeling as if it went through a shredder in Hell and back. She saw him as if a dream and she tried to sit up and prove she wasn't a weak woman who just got her ass kicked by two lousy men. Pain entered her from all sides and she cried out as she fell back to the pillow beneath her. Damn.

She was in a bed, it was cozy, so comfortable and she wished that all the comfort would enter her body and soothe her wounds. Soft blankets enfolded her body and the shades were closed in the small hotel room lit by a small lamp in the corner, smaller than hers and Spike's had been.

"Faye, you shouldn't try to move," he was saying softly.

"Am I going to die?" She asked her voice cracked, her throat parched. Her whole body felt like she was dying.

He smiled sadly. "No." He was lying wasn't he? But she refused to accept he was lying to her about something so important.

She began to cry, did she really think she was going to die? Spike wouldn't let her die, he wouldn't let Death catch her, would he? She smiled through her tears as he touched one that fell down her cheek and brushed it away with his finger. His touch was so soft it made her shiver. He was on his knees beside her and was smiling sadly, thankful she was alive.

"Spike." She managed through sobs. She felt so comforted by the fact he was the last thing she saw when she blacked out and the first thing she saw when she awoke. It was all like a nightmare that had a happy ending and yet the ending hadn't played itself out yet, and she waited for another monster show it's ugly face, take what she finally found and throw it away like it was nothing. All good things came to an end eventually and she was scared that the moment she found herself in was one of those things.

"Don't try to talk, Faye," he said as he took her hand in his and held it tightly. He was touching her and so caring, so lovingly, so sure of what his feelings were and yet so unconscious of them. His eyes were so deep, so dreamlike, so important to her heart that it made it hurt.

"I love you, Spike." She had wanted to say those words ever since he ran away to die six months ago. She had wanted to reach out to him even then and she hadn't known it. She had wanted him to be there for her and protect her from the world that hated her. She wanted him to guard her from the people that wounded her based on the fact that even if he protested he would. And then he turned out to be the same, another person who wounded her and played life's game on the roll of the dice.

But it didn't matter what happened in the past because what was happening in her heart in the present meant more than anything to her, meant so much more than life itself, than death, than the emptiness she sought to achieve in six long months.

"Faye, you're a little drugged up. You don't mean that." He looked deep into her eyes and what she saw in them was what burned in her soul.

She laughed bitterly. "No, no maybe I don't. You wouldn't believe me even if I did," she said softly. She coughed, her chest erupting in pain as she raised her hand to cover her mouth. Her broken bones protested to her movement as blood produced itself on her hand, on her lips, and tongue. She stared at the blood as if it held answers, as if everything was written in it's crimson death. She shivered. She'd seen so much blood in her life and none ever brought her so close to death.

"Faye,.." Spike stared at her, telling her with his eyes, pleading her to stop rambling because he was loosing his own control, he was loosing his hold on his own feelings. He moved closer.

"Spike, I don't want to die. You don't understand, I don't want to go because I know I will never see you again." She smiled sadly. "I love you, Spike. I don't know why or how, but it happened." She could feel scolding tears run down her face. Maybe she was pumped with drugs but the words sounded so right, so worth every ounce of strength the rest of her life amounted to. She may have been out of herself but her feelings were still the same, her love more open.

He touched her face and stared at her intently. Searching, reading her features for the truth, for the meaning of what she was saying."Faye, please, stop talking. You're pushing yourself." He moved his face closer to hers and stared into her eyes. "Diandre is coming back with something to help you. But you have to stop pushing yourself."

"Damnitt!" She cried as she tried to sit up. Pain thrashed her body but she didn't care. Black spots played over her vision as she tried to move, swing her fists at him in momentary anger. In an instant Spike was on top of her, pinning her arms lightly to the bed at her side as he sat above her his knees on either side of her hips on the bed as he supported his weight on them and not on her stomach.

"Faye, stop it!" He shouted at her as she continued to fight, Her wounds reopened and her blood soaked the sheets more than before. "Faye!"

"Stop telling me that the drugs are doing this to me, Spike Spiegel!" She cried. Tears scalded her face, her cheeks. "Don't patronize me!" The pain ripped through her as she sobbed for him to understand.

"Faye, please!" He stared deep into her eyes pleading with a command so deep it hurt her to see those feelings in his eyes.

She stopped struggling and broke down into misery. "Spike, I love you. Don't make me say it again. Say something back to me, do you love me back or do you think I'm crazy?" She stared up at him, her tears blurring his figure making him more abstract, making him seem more far away. She felt the ache of having him disappear again from her life and her soul ripped apart. Don't leave me again. I won't be able to take it...

He stared down into her eyes and all he saw was pain, sorrow, urgency, despair and his soul hurt to see all that as she looked up at him, tears rolling down her bruised cheeks. Even with all those bruises and cuts she was beautiful, she was even more so because the feeling in her words, the emotions in her face, made her that way. For once Spike was seeing the real Faye underneath all the bitchiness, the coldness, the smartassness, and the emptiness.

He liked everything he saw. The ache inside him was so strong, so complete as he bent his head and loosened his grip on her wrists as his lips met her softly.

And then everything fit together. All questions answered, the magic was set, and everything was perfect. His lips were so soft as if to reprove for all the harshness in her wounds. She was so surprised that she gasped against his kiss that made her feel like flying and falling at the same time. Then she was kissing him back and her arms encircled his neck with happiness she never remembered feeling before.

There was magic everywhere, her body seemed to vibrate in the feeling. Her finger tips tingled as she ran them through his soft hair, as his own entangled themselves in the ends of her own dark purple locks. Then his lips were searching harder, looking for something they couldn't find as he struggled against her passion and love.

Then he was leaning too hard on her stomach and she was crying out against his lips. Immediately he pulled away and stared down at her in astonishment. What the hell did he just do?

"Faye, I-" he began as he slipped out of her embrace, angry at himself, angry at his heart. He moved off the bed and stood beside her.

Then she was smiling as blood dripped over her lips, in her mouth. He had pressed the blood to rise in her again when he put pressure on her stomach and she felt like she was drowning in it. "Thank you, Spike." She wanted to tell him more but her words were being choked out of her. She was content, she was satisfied, she felt complete and she could die in peace. He loved her and everything seemed right, even her death, just by knowing that.

She closed her eyes.

She couldn't breathe as she gasped, and Spike was shaking her, begging her to hold on. Telling her to come back to him, to not give up, that Diandre was there and setting up the machine.

She saw Diandre stand over her and smile, saying something about how things were going to be fine. Telling her to hold on just a little longer.

Her blood was choking her as she made an attempt to cough, to breathe. Neither worked. I can't hold on I'm sorry, Spike.

Then she felt a lightening shock and everything went black once more.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Diandre could feel the electrical current flow through Faye as she attached the two probes to the woman's forehead. The woman choked out a cry, and then Diandre was touching Faye's chest with her hands, her whole body lighting on fire with the electricity that flowed through Faye to her. Then she concentrated on making Faye whole, alive, healthy, and unmarred again. She pictured in her mind how the young woman must have looked and focused innerly on that image. Diandre could feel imaginary blood choke her while she still breathed, she could feel the various wounds though none marked her body. She could feel the wind run past her and Faye, death passing them by. Time, dreams, faces that meant nothing to Diandre but something to Faye warped her image and then it was all over and Diandre was there standing over Faye, who was staring at her with aqua eyes of disorientation.

No scars marked Faye's body and Diandre smiled as she sat back. She was so weak after that expression of will but she knew she had saved Faye and that was all that mattered.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Ed looked at the computer screen, typing furiously as she worked. Ayutora came around the corner and fed Ed some appetizing food with a small smile. "You work alot for a kid," she said as she sat down on the yellow couch.

"Edward, wants to find Jet." Edward didn't even look up from her work as she typed.

"Yeah, I think we all do," Ayutora said.

Just then the ship was hit hard and both girls went flying to the floor in the vibration.

"What the hell?" Ayutora shouted, her red mass of hair over her eyes.

Edward typed a few keys and the yelled out in an animal like voice. "Bebop Bebop is under attack!"












NOTE: Bad huh? I know. But ya know this was so spur of the moment. Sorry about the mistakes!!!