Sorry, it's taken me so long to update. It's the end of the semester and I'm rushing to have my photography portfolio prepped and ready for final critique. Total nightmare.

Tried to make this one a bit longer than usual to make up for my slacker-hood.

Hopefully no one is gonna hate me too much for my take on a couple factors in Julia's past.

As always, lemme know what you all think?

Passive: Vital Signs

And into bed she goes. Fumbling and flopping and grabbing at the pillows after announcing to us both that she'd located it. Completely uncaring of the fact I have a box ticket view of her panty wearing ass. It's vintage Valentine.

Faye's on her belly, smacking the pillows and the hem of that little yellow t-shirt of hers is riding up, just like before in the bar, and I start picking at the dents and scratches on the hatch lining and thinking about peppers sans beef- anything to ignore the recurring notion of testing my thumbs against those twin dents at the base of her back. It's a thought I've had too often to not have actually put to the test and I've never been wealthy in the way of restraint.

I'm still dizzy from my little confession session with Jet and I'm fast coming upon that point in the day where I either need to sleep or hit someone. A good fuck would probably also do me right up and truth be told it's been a while, but I'm slowly becoming a realist- or, at least, getting better at feigning one- and occasionally I know when not to test my luck. Test it too much, at least.

It's been an eternity since I've thought about Amy and what went down between Chelsea and me. Been a day and a dollar past the same eternity since I've actually told anyone about it. And I've never fucking told anyone the whole story. I'm doubting very much that I ever will.

My entire adult life has been built around thrust and retreat tactics. Busy sloshing around whatever chooses to show up, splashing it in the face and seeping down the drain, ideally, before I can be mopped up. Not much in favour of letting myself dwell on whatever I'm actually dealing with. Personality fault. We all got 'em. Then again, could be my personality fault is really just my personality in its entirety. I'm a fucked up son of a cunt, I won't ever claim otherwise.

"Move over." My hands are already shooing Faye further back on the mattress to make room for myself and the little twit actually moves over before she realizes what's what and shoots up in the bed suddenly indignant.

"What the hell are you doing?" I don't even bother looking over, just grab a fist full of pillow and cram it behind my head while kicking at the heels of my shoes trying to get them off.

"I'm taking a nap, Valentine. Can't do it with you harping in my ear."

"You can't do it, period. Not in here. You have a bed. It's down the hall." She's says this all very matter-of-fact, with all the golden conviction of any self-righteous drunk. I do indeed have a bed and she's right that it's right down the hall, but that doesn't matter since I've already given up on anything resembling behaviour for the time being.

"Afraid it won't work, need to wash the sheets." It's a half truth at any rate and that's better than what usually shits its way out of my mouth. " Haven't been much of a domestic lately. You understand, dontcha, Valentine?" For the record, that part is a whole truth.

"The couch, then." She's sputtering and leaning over me, insistent. If it didn't speak volumes of all her little fucked up issues, I'd say it was cute that Faye-con-ya-as-soon-as-kill-ya-Valentine was this flustered at the idea of having a man in her bed, especially, little ole' me.

"Out of the question, couch smells funny ." Another full truth, for those keeping score. My eyes are closed, but only so I can keep from laughing. Doesn't seem right to go laughing in a drunk girl's face, as much as she might deserve it.

"The couch smells funny because you're always busy skanking it up." Touché and ouch.

If all it takes to get Faye back into barbing order is to get her drunk on homebrew rot gut- which could have easily poisoned her- then it's almost worth the risk. Still, kinda pathetic and something that's going to need some work. I've done enough sad luck drinking in my day to know it's better to do it with company. At the very least it guarantees that you aren't going to Jimi Hendrix yourself all over the floor for your crewmates to find at a later date.

"Look, I'm tired. You're also tired, or at least you should be after all that drinking-which you rudely did alone, not that I'm surprised. But here we find ourselves in a bed. Seems like a solution to me."

This is me at my most charming. Doesn't seem like much, I know, but girls aren't the only ones that can pull off a puppy dog pout and I'm old blood at the sport. Now, smile like a champ, Spiegel.

Truth be told, I am exhausted and I really do wish she'd lay the hell back down and just go the fuck to sleep, make this easier on the both of us. Everyone in this functionally fucked crew of ours is run ragged from the last year and a half and we're only getting worse. Manufacturer warranty is up, folks. Owners are now responsible for repairs. Batteries not included.

That and, spot me for the asshole that I am, I don't feel much like moving from where I'm at, so she can just deal with it. Besides, I relish any chance to successfully make her blush.

Faye looks every bit as dubious as she should be, but it also seems she's fresh out of options and finally she lays back down, brows furrowed and eyes fixed squarely on me. It's nice to be the centre of attention when you're in a lady's bed.

I know the only reason I'm getting away with this is because it's me and she's too drunk to actually do anything about it. There's more than a little chunk of my mind that's relived that an inebriated Valentine isn't prone to falling into bed with men when she runs off like she does. Guess I lost that bet with Jet after all. Scary how he can call her shots so well. Makes me wonder just how many women like Faye are out there running around and just how many of them have stolen Jet's wallet.

She's uncomfortable as hell and I do my best to ignore the fact. It isn't lost on me that this is probably one of the biggest insights I've gotten into Faye and her trust issues. A year and a half of pulling each other out of the grinder and generally giving a damn and she can't even drop guard enough to lay next to me for an afternoon. It's gotta be just as lonely as it sounds.

Now, a smart guy's gonna tell you that it's a bad idea to compare women. An honest one is gonna tell you you're gonna do it anyways. I'm shameless enough of an ass to fess up to the fact I do it way more than I should be.

Julia was the kind of woman who'd been fucked over since the very moment she slid into existence, but she'd led the kind of life where that was normal. You grow up that way and you just don't know any better when it comes to some things. She honestly had had it bad and it broke her up something tragic. She'd been a prostitute by 15, red eye addict by 19 and dead by 32. All of that said, she was still a god damned angel compared with me or any role I've ever played.

All those things were just an epilogue to her shit stain of a childhood that would leave you wanting to kill her daddy if it weren't already a done deed. 'It's a body that won't ever be found' was the final thing she had to say about him the one and only time I'd ever heard her speak on the subject. I always got the feeling that whatever happened there hadn't left her with anything resembling satisfaction. That little fact just made me hate him all the more.

Closure's a tricky beast.

Julia had started running with our crowd after Vicious took a liking to her and up and killed her pimp who'd been one of Mao's 'vendors'. Before that, she'd always been on the periphery, we knew who she was and she knew who we were because Dougie was always bringing her around with him as arm dressing or using her as a go-between. Even someone as genuinely gorgeous as Julia couldn't spruce up an ambitious cunt rag like Dougie.

I don't remember anyone blinking twice when he showed up after three days of being missing, sans organs and a severed dick buried half way down his windpipe. If anything, Mao was relived not to have to deal with the prick anymore.

In my experience there's two ways women end up when they've been tossed around that bad. The first is pretty much how Julia was- namely eager for anything resembling the affection she'd so seldom got. Afraid to contradict and allowing the people around her to lead her life and care for her. She'd run for it, arms spread and lips pleading. Not saying it made her bad or nothing, the very opposite, just saying that it happens.

She was practically a ghost haunting her own life. Julia was a whisper, soft and hardly there- it's a fair description of who she was and had always been, when you really get down to it, when I'm allowing myself to be honest. "Sotto voce", comes Vicious' pretentious voice from somewhere behind my memories. A hushed something that you'd strain to hear or see. Just like a phantom. But she was still able to reach out, still able to attempt contact. That's what hooked me, I envied her ability to do that, I still do.

Quiet, suffering Julia.

She didn't know how to escape it and I have my doubts that she really wanted to, she'd been so resigned to the life.

Then you have the polar opposite. You have women like Faye. They've been kicked around so much they've learned to kick back. Faye's had a shit run of years, that'll never be in contention, as much as I hassle her. She got dicked over from the start by the first kind hand she'd trusted and she's been biting those that feed her to taste for poison ever since.

Who knows what all she's never bothered filling me and Jet in on. I'm sure there's plenty of less than shiny things from the past four years, never mind the new little revelation that she's an old world crime darling- no telling what kind of childhood that's going to build.

I see it anytime a guy gets ballsy enough to make a pass at her. She'll use her, admittedly, copious amounts of allure just enough to get a bounty done and over with, but that's it. The rest is just a show that's meant to intimidate most men into leaving her alone. But every now and again guy comes up to her at a bar and she'll waste no time in emasculating him with a pointed comment, smirk and a back toss of her drink to send him packing with practiced ease. It can be quite a show.

If she'd been born a dude, she'd be King Shit of Hardass Mountain. The kind of hard hitter you can't help but respect. With the glaring lack of a penis, she's just a shrew. Still, I've got plenty of respect for the girl.

But the heavy truth of it is Faye doesn't know what to do with herself if a guy comes at her with anything more gentle than a punch. If he tries, she does her damnedest to push him into something she knows, familiar terrain- a situation where she can fight. The moat on the other side of her little guarded emotional wall is filled with scrotum chomping piranhas and dick sawing kittens. My hand to god.

That's her tried and true strategy- get them to swing a fist and she can lay them low. No fuss, no muss. Just the dance of panic that passes over her just before the game face slides up and into place, locked and loaded. Bang. Another would-be bites the dust.

She just doesn't know how to cope with the idea of someone not trying to take or inflict something on her, the thought just never occurs to her, I'd bet. Just look at any number of our own little dealings, toss in the fact I apparently get her no-nos all bothered and it makes for a theatrical event.

Conflicted, frenetic Faye.

We're like bad opera, all of us. And true to that formula, everything old is new again. The cosmos hit restart, but the cast and quirks are altered in this pass through. I've figured I might as well settle into the idea and that greedy side of me that demanded Julia is now insisting that the Romani would do well to follow my suit.

"Come 'ere." I grab her wrist and drag her arm across my chest, she honestly surprises me when she doesn't resist or full out throw me off the bed, but she also doesn't relax, which bothers me more than I'll allow myself to admit.

"What do you want?" Her voice lacks the corrosive scorn I readily associate with anything Faye Valentine, but her eyes are a mess of any number of things beneath the hood of her bangs. There's a pleading element to her words and I think I'm finally starting to realize just how fucked the situation between us has gotten.

"Told you, I just want to sleep. Go to sleep, Faye."

"That's not what I meant, Spike." her voice is low and she probably wrestled with actually following through with saying that. Faye presses her weight down with her other shoulder to give herself leverage to sit up, but I still have a hold on her wrist and keep her latched down, my arm sneaking beneath and against her back to secure the hold. "What are you doing? What is it you want? I don't understand." There's anxiety edging its way into her voice and I'm starting to regret forcing myself on her like this.

One of Faye's lesser known strategies is to lay all of her cards out and hope you're not too much of an asshole to take advantage of her. It's reserved strictly for moments of desperation and, as far as I know, I'm the only one she'll do that with. It feels good to have that kind of trust from someone as resistant as Valentine, even if it might be undeserved, but it's still hell when you're just as evasive.

"I don't know, Faye. I just want to sleep." And I do. I want to sleep like men in hell want water. I need to be able to shut all this shit out, all the admissions of the day, all the fuck ups of the week and the hang ups of this cluster crap lifetime. Just for a little. Put off now what I can avoid again tomorrow. It's what I call survival.

I need that. I need it badly.

Her body is tense but her movements are slurred from her drinking and any effort she puts forth is wasted right up until she opens her mouth again and spits out a bomb. "I'm not Julia."

God damnit.

"I'm not Julia." She insists again, saying it into my shirt to avoid looking at me. I can feel her starting to coil with tension, probably regretting saying anything, but I have no idea if what I need to anticipate an attack or having to dash after her when she decides to bolt.

"I know you're not." I can't think of anything more to do that just agree with her. She's right. They're not polar opposites or nothing, but you're never going to mistake one for the other.

"What are you playing at?"

"I don't know."

"You can't not know, Spike." Sure I can, I've gone through my entire adult life not knowing much of anything and pulling through okay. Or at least alive, at any rate.

Faye's a quiet drunk, for the most part. Shocks the fuck out of me, and everyone else, but there it is. There's the occasional brawl, of course, but that's just blowing off steam and she would do that sober either way. For the most part, though, the formula is as follows: drink, brood, drink, check lipstick, tell some guy to fuck off, drink, sulk, drink, call Jet or me for a ride.

Now, I'm pretty sure she's getting ready to tell me to fuck off so the only things left on the list are to fix her makeup and to call the big guy in here to drag my ass away.

I'm getting ready to launch into a nice little heartfelt number when she persists with whatever that damned thought process of hers is shaping up to be. "She's gone. I'm not her and I won't be some replacement for her. I don't need to deal with that kind of bullshit. I don't hate myself enough to just be your substitute fuck."

Any speech I had prepared dissolved. She hasn't lifted her head and she hasn't lost her cool, but there's exhaustion popping holes through her voice and I have every doubt that she knows exactly where she's going with this.

"Just?" I can't help myself asking and doing so with only levity halfway on my mind. I don't mean to pull a penis brigade stunt and zero in on the ambiguity of her refusal to sleep with me, but that's legitly what caught my ears and I honestly want to know the whole truth behind that little 'just' inclusion.

"I-" She starts lifting her head to finally look at me and I just smack it back to where it was while looking down the length of us on the narrow bed. This is going to a dangerous place and it's best to stifle whatever she's thinking before it develops any further and I end up considering the fact that I might very well be big enough a bastard to use her like that.

I might be, but I doubt it. I'm messed up for sure, and me suddenly allowing myself to cave to impulses I've had battened down since we met is a new thing all together. Like I said, restraint and I aren't exactly exchanging cooking recipes or nothing. So, yeah, the timing makes it look terrible on the surface, makes it look like I'm just falling into old habits all over again, but I really do want to believe that I've finally made it to a point where I can move on. I want to believe that I'm done wallowing. I want her to believe that.

"Just go to sleep." Again, I'm cringing at the sound of my own voice, but Faye's either too tired or too drunk to try for defensiveness and I'm relived when I can feel her struggle to relax. At least she's trying.

Eventually, she does pass into sleep, but I'm left here wide the fuck awake despite all the noise I made about being wiped. The pillows have me propped high enough that I'm almost in a sitting position, my hands still securing Faye where I want her and all I'm left to do is sit in the claustrophobic bunk and soak in our surroundings.

Faye's legs trace a pale streak down a good portion of my own legs, the pallor only interrupted by the cloud of yellow bruising around the knife puncture on her thigh. Jet had mentioned it was from the last bounty and she's still got a bit of a limp going. I should probably get her into a sparring match sometime soon to test just how bad she's favoring the leg.

The only disturbing part about the injury is the very fact that stuff like this I don't find disturbing. It really says something about a man's life when battle wounds on pretty, young girls is business as usual.

It's almost two hours later when that cat jumps onto the bed waking the both of us up with its damned bellowing. Faye's slow to come out of her sleep but reaches over to scruff the cat behind the ear as it passes by in its march up and down the mattress.

"Figure out his name?" She still hasn't lifted her head or made a move to untangle herself and I wonder after that since I know the alcohol's burnt its way mostly out of her system at this point.

"George."

"You named a cat George? That's not a name for a cat, Faye."

"Spike's not a name for a boy."

"All man, baby." But my heart's just not into trading commentary- we're both dazed by the moment and I'm struggling to make it back out of the fog my mind is sweltering in and wondering just how I got to this mental state to begin with. I'm weighing my options over moving when Faye frees herself and slowly climbs over me and briefly straddles me in her quest to land her foot on the floor.

My hands automatically go up to grab her around her back but the look confused look she gives me over a chewed lip stops me from dragging her down on top of my chest. She breaks the stare before I do and stands up fully and heads for the door. I don't fight her, only get up and follow her down the hall and all the way back into the hanger.

It's still raining outside despite of the sunny sky. Faye bends down, still in her little black panties, and picks up the abandoned pack of smokes before righting herself and staring out into the sun storm.

"The devil is beating his wife."

Again, Faye Valentine's found a way to confuse the ever loving hell out of me.

"The storm." She gestures outwards while she picks at the lid of the cigarettes. "When it rains like this, with the sun out and all. It's supposed to mean the devil is beating his wife." Her voice is far away and I can't tell if it's her or my own inability to ground myself in reality. On reflex, my lighter is out and igniting the tip of her smoke, but she doesn't bring it to her mouth, just knots her arms over her chest and continues to stare.

Then she's pressed hard up against me and I'm pushing us both towards the hanger wall for leverage. The kiss is different than the one before. That one had been something eager and reckless. This isn't.

She groans a little against my mouth and drops the cigarette, but I don't flinch when the cherry burns the top of my foot before falling away completely. Her hand are in my hair and mine are around her back and snaked up to hold her head in place, demanding.

This kiss is extremely different than the previous one. That was me partially trying to see what I could get away with, trying to get a reaction out of her and throw her off her guard.

This kiss is different. This is me making a decision.