Disclaimer: I don't own Cowboy Bebop, even though I'd be rich if I did. (Stupid copyright laws. Argh.) Anyway, this is the second chapter to "A Tale of Two Cowboys", titled "Ashes, Ashes." Enjoy.

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It was late. Probably later than she wanted to think about, but Faye was beyond thinking. Her last fight with Spike had put everything into perspective. He didn't love her, didn't hate her. He didn't feel anything for her or Jet. Just his Julia.

Instead of indulging in a cry fest in her room, Faye managed to find and steal several cans of beer from Jet's secret stash. Not so secret now, huh? Faye giggled to herself drunkenly. She lay, limbs splayed haphazardly over the threadbare orange couch in the Bebop's main room, empty beer cans scattered around her, like an aluminum tornado's aftermath.

The droning background noise of the vid screen was a pleasant companion to her addled brain. In her state of semi-consciousness, images and sounds from the past few days flitted before her eyes. The gunk-on-a-plate that Jet tried to pass off as dinner, Ein whining at her for chowing down on the last of his food, their last bounty lying dead in the gutter, and Spike's face, angry and red, yelling at her for swiping the last of his cigarettes.

The last cigarette. She took a long drag from it now, holding the nicotine-laden air in her lungs before exhaling and adding it to the murky haze that hung above her. With a loud slurp, she finished off the beer in her left hand. What was that now, number four? Maybe number five? She didn't know. And frankly, Scarlet, I don't give a damn! Her mental voice added, which sent Faye into another spasm of giggles, resulting in tears running down her face.

Tears that continued long after the humor of the old movie line had expired. Faster and faster images from the past few weeks played before her eyes; each one a different fight with Spike, now spliced together on her mind's film and played in an agonizing loop.

He didn't love her. Fine, she could handle that. Faye Valentine certainly hadn't survived this long by letting herself fall for anyone. Especially not fluffy-haired egotistical cowboys. She sighed, and rolled over, facing the threadbare couch's back. Her stolen cigarette, forgotten, fell from her fingers and burned itself out on the cool metal floor.

She passed out like that, and dreamed that a lanky green-haired cowboy swept her off to a castle in the clouds. Suddenly she was awake, the dream a quickly fading tendril. How long had she been out? Minutes? Hours? Why am I awake now? She paused, about to raise a hand and rub at her eyes. There, that noise again. A quiet shuffle, as if someone was being careful not to wake her from her alcohol-induced slumber.

Faye risked turning her head and opening her left eye to a slit. Spike sat on the floor by her feet, using the couch as a backrest. His characteristic slouch was gone, his back ramrod straight as he sat cross-legged staring at the vid screen. A lonely cigarette smoldered between two of his slender fingers, condemned to a short meaningless life that ended in forgotten ashes on the floor.

For a moment, the flickering images from the vid screen made his face look like a leering gargoyle from one of Earth's ancient castles. Faye eyed him a moment longer, and then pretending to shift in her sleep, turned on her left side to study him easier. Something inside her ached to see him like that-a stone statue of the man she had somehow fallen for. He never moved, barely even blinking as he stared at and probably through the flickering images on the screen. The numerous beers that had landed Faye on this couch in the first place faded from her bloodstream as she watched Spike.

It was as if she wasn't even there. His usual self was gone, replaced by this…thing. Faye wanted to shake him, make him move, make him forget the past that was probably calling to him now. But she couldn't. It was like she was frozen as well, trapped into playing herself off as the drunken sleeper, just so she could see him like this, with no fighting and no anger. His profile was so still that she began to wonder if she was having another drunken dream. Suddenly, his lips moved, shattering the frozen image.

"You can stop looking at me now. I'd suggest you take a picture, because it will be around long after I'm gone." Faye jumped. He hadn't even given so much as a glance to her to see if she was awake. Her lips thinned, and she bit off one of the many angry retorts that came to mind, settling on silence as her reply.

Determined to go back to sleep, she closed her eyes and tried to forget how close he was. She could practically feel the heat emanating from him by her ankles. Not a dream. She reminded herself. Maybe…maybe she could talk to him now. In the night cycle of the Bebop, Faye felt the dark calling to her; making her want to reveal everything to him. Cautiously, she rolled over again.

Spike was leaning, elbows on his knees, and his face in his hands. His fingers were pale and ghostly in the weak light from the vid screen, and they clutched in his hair. He made no sound, but body language conveyed in the simplest terms what Faye would never guessed. Despair. The sag of his shoulders made her heart ache.

She felt sorry for the subtle jealous verbal jabs she had made at Julia. Every angry word she had ever thrown at Spike now echoed in her heart as she watched him in his silent acknowledgement that the shadows from his past still managed to cast their shadow over his present.

Before she knew it, Faye had sat up, and reached a hand out to his left shoulder. When reflecting on it later, she still wondered if she had meant to comfort him, or to simply shake him. At their contact, Spike twitched, but didn't move. The heat from his shoulder warmed Faye's cold hand. The muscle beneath the rumpled suit rippled, and he suddenly was holding her wrist with his right hand. Faye gasped when she caught sight of his face.

Lines of tears streaked his tanned skin, leaking from both eyes. Faye briefly considered tugging her hand back, and running for the safety of her room, but his eyes had frozen her to that spot. He didn't say a word as Faye gaped at him. The cowboy cries? She managed to ask herself. The garnet orbs were filled with sorrow, and she felt her own eyes fill with tears in response. God, how she wanted to hold him, and wipe those tears away.

They held that pose, communicating more in that moment than they had in the numerous months of co-existing aboard the Bebop. Spike was the first to break the silence. "Go away." He murmured quietly. Blinking, Faye was unable to process the simple command. She replayed the words in her head several times before she was able to understand it.

Spike had released her hand, and gone back to staring through the vid screen, pretending he was watching a muted rerun of the same comedy that Faye had giggled at hours ago as she drank beer after mindless beer, trying to forget him. She rolled to a standing position beside the couch, and picked up a few of the beer cans lying haphazardly around her. After tossing them in the nearest can, she glanced back to see if perhaps he had relented.

He sat in exactly the same position, this time with a new cigarette clutched between two fingers, leaving wispy smoke trails to the ceiling. His eyes were glittering reflections of the vid screen, but Faye could still see traces of the tears he had shed. Tears of her own suddenly threatened to overwhelm her again, and she shut the garbage can with a metallic bang. He never moved. I'll be damned if I let him see me cry. Faye whirled around, and ran for her room.

She managed to slam the door before the tears came, and she sank to the floor, sobbing for herself and the man in the next room, who was as cold as the cigarette ashes on the floor.

RING AROUND THE ROSIE, POCKETS FULL OF POSEY…