Just like the ones I used to know
Where the treetops glistened and children listened
To hear sleigh bells in the snow
Edward could tell her companions had had a bad day the second they stepped into the Bebop's lounge. Jet-person's ugly suit had black streaks down the front like he'd been break dancing. Faye-Faye just looked royally pissed, which wasn't unusual for Faye-Faye, but she had that gleam in her eye and the spring in her walk that meant she was Really Mad For Real. Ed almost laughed when she saw Spike's head, but decided against it when he flopped on the couch and let out an almost pathetic moan. Ein came scampering over and hopped in his lap. Spike didn't push him off; he just sort of slumped over and moaned again. Edward cautiously climbed on the couch on his other side and rested her chin on his shoulder. "Spikey is not having a happy holiday?"
Faye flung something heavy against the wall of the ship and made a loud noise. "I cannot believe that little FUCK stole our BOUNTY!" She swept her arm across the coffee table, sending the TV and Tomato to the floor. Ed wasn't worried about Tomato—she was tough—but the TV made an unpleasant breaking sound when it hit the deck.
"KNOCK IT OFF!" Jet bellowed in his don't-fuck-with-me-tone. He sat heavily in the small chair. "Look. I know it's been a bad day for all of us…"
"That's all you can say?!" Faye screeched. "A BAD DAY?!" Jet slammed his hand on the table.
"Faye, I am at the point where I am going to shoot you if you open that mouth of yours one more time tonight. Capice?" Faye pouted, but sat down, crowding onto the couch with Spike, Ed and Ein. Spike just grunted. He didn't even move.
Ed traced the bald patch along the top of his head. "Spikey should sue his hairdresser."
"I hate my life," said Spike, putting his head in his hands.
"Well, he's useless," said Jet. "And Faye's gone over the edge." Faye didn't disagree. Jet turned to his youngest crew member. "Looks like it's just you and me, Ed. Feel like doing Jet a favor?" Ed nodded happily, glad that one person on the ship hadn't flipped out on her.
"How can Edward be of service, Jet-person?" she said eagerly, doing a forward roll off the sofa and landing in front of her laptop.
"I want you to pull Timothy Tan's bank records," said Jet. "He handles a lot of dough, and he just stole a shitload from us, and he's gotta put it somewhere." Ed stuck out her tongue and then started to type furiously.
"Smart smart," she agreed.
"I don't know where he thinks he's gonna go with our money," Faye suddenly spoke up. "Every bounty hunter in the galaxy is still after him, and he knows he can't run to his sister anymore." Spike swiveled his head to Faye.
"What do you mean he knows?" Faye returned his look as if he were obviously stupid.
"Because I told him, numbnuts." Spike jumped to his feet.
"How stupid could you be?!" he yelled at Faye. Ed and Jet looked up at him. Spike didn't yell. When he yelled, things got serious. Faye, ignoring this fact, looked to Jet.
"What's with him?"
"If Tan knows his sister gave him up," said Jet with infinite patience that was about to give way to shouting and several undignified suggestions about what Faye could do to herself, "he's probably on his way to go kill her before she can tell any more bounty hunters his life story." Faye bit her lip.
"Oh. I guess that makes sense." A cold wind blew through the lounge as Spike banged the door open and disappeared into the snowy night.
"Hey!" Jet shouted after him, almost automatically. It didn't do any good—not that it ever had before. The Swordfish roared to life outside and the errant space cowboy was gone.
"Edward has found something!" Ed announced loudly. "Faye-Faye and Jet need to look right now!" Jet leaned over her shoulder.
"Oh, Jesus," he said. He turned to Faye.
"Go get Spike." Faye put her hands on her hips.
"I'm not going after that idiot…"
"NOW!" said Jet. Faye frowned.
"What's the matter?" Jet flipped the laptop around and showed her.
"Oh boy," she said.
"Bad. Very bad," agreed Ed.
"I'll notify the ISSP. You go get Spike," said Jet, running for the comm. Faye grabbed her Glock and an extra clip and followed Spike's suit into the dark night lit only by distant Christmas lights.
Margaret Tan's building was mostly dark when Spike set the Swordfish down in the street. Snow was blowing fast, diagonally in front of his lights, and it cut into his face when he jumped out of the ship and ran across the slick sidewalk to the apartment's vestibule. His mind was racing at a thousand miles an hour, most of his thoughts nowhere near coherent. Margaret was in danger. Margaret who looked like Julia. Who smelled and spoke and acted like Julia. Margaret might die.
Spike didn't think he could handle that.
He depressed the buzzer and held it down until Margaret's sleepy voice came over the speaker. "What?" she said. "This better not be Bob from the third forgetting his keys again."
"It's Spike," said Spike shortly. "Let me in."
"Do you realize what time it is?" said Margaret, immediately sounding awake and more snappish. "Even I'm not that desperate for the money."
"This isn't about the bounty," said Spike. "Your brother escaped earlier tonight. He knows you turned him in. Let me up. Please." Spike was begging, and he didn't like the fact that this woman reduced him to it so easily. But one thought of that blond hair spread over a halo of blood was enough to make him forget everything.
"Tim is coming here?" said Margaret. As easily as she was irritated, she was now afraid.
"I'm pretty sure," said Spike. He was gratified by the inner door swinging open to the discordant tone of the buzzer.
Spike took the stairs two at a time, eschewing the suspiciously creaky elevator for the power of his own long legs. He reached Margaret's floor wheezing for breath, but sped down the hallway to her door and pounded on it. Margaret opened it before his second knock could descend. She was fully clothed and she had an all-too-familiar expression to Spike of confused anger mixed with fear.
"This was not smooth, Spiegel," she said. "This is not the way I planned for things to go." Spike moved around her and cast a quick glance at the open area of her apartment. There was nothing. He let out his breath.
"Neither did I."
"So now what am I supposed to do?" asked Margaret. "Because mark my words, Tim is not just going to blindly wander over here and take a shot at me. If he was smart enough to get away from you he's not gonna get caught again." She slumped in the overstuffed chair and wrapped her arms around herself.
"Boy did I make a mistake with you people." Spike wanted more than anything to go over, kneel and add his own arms to hers. Instead he just stood rather helplessly in the center of the room, his hands at his sides.
"I'm sorry."
"Yeah. You're sorry, I'm sorry, everybody's sorry," said Margaret with sudden venom. "But you're not as sorry as you're going to be, Spike."
The floor dropped out from under Spike's feet as he saw Margaret Tan's arms unfold to reveal she was holding a gun. It was a revolver, and old one, heavily oiled and polished to a high shine. In Margaret's dim apartment, it gleamed. Spike spoke the only word he could think of.
"Why?" It was much more than the simple question, but Margaret didn't know that. She stood up, shaking her head at Spike.
"Why? You know, that's a really good question, Spike." She extended her arm and pulled back the hammer on the revolver. "You know what I got for Christmas last year? You know what my doctor called me from his home to tell me on Christmas day?" Spike was silent. If the truth be told, he wasn't even in the room. In body maybe, but his mind was a million miles and a few light-years away. "I have cancer," said Margaret. "Me. The girl who never smoked a day in her life, the girl who doesn't even eat red meat, for chrissake." A tear slipped down her cheek. "Prognosis: two months to live. So I decided I better tie up my life's loose ends."
"And that," said Timothy Tan as he stepped out of the bathroom, "included me." He still had the pistol he'd taken from the ISSP office. Spike numbly turned to look at him.
"Setup," he said, more to himself than as a question. And so it always was, just when his life couldn't get any more nightmarish than it seemed to be at that moment. A wormhole opened, and a new dimension in pain was discovered. I'm just watching a bad dream I never wake up from.
"You can imagine how surprised I was to hear from my baby sister," said Tan, "especially when she called to tell me she only had a little time to live." He smiled. Spike could care less about his expository rambling. He wasn't even there. He was just observing, casually. From the outside. Julia…
"Of course, I wouldn't let my blood down just like that," said Tan. "There's one doctor on Mars who has a special gene-therapy treatment for malignant, metastasized cancer like Meg's."
"Millions and millions of woolong every time," said Margaret. "But he got the money. He always did." She was shaking. "And this was my last treatment. This is my last treatment!" she cried as more tears slipped out of those eyes, pools of brown instead of blue but drowning pools all the same. "It's my Christmas. You'd deny a dying girl her life. What kind of a sick, sick bastard are you?"
"It's blood money," said Spike calmly. "Others have died so you can live." It wasn't an argument. It was just something to say. A fact he felt like pointing out. He didn't care. He just felt numb.
"Jesus died for our sins, and we celebrate his birthday in return," said Tan. "So a few more people had to die for mine. So what?" He also leveled his gun at Spike. "You, unlike those pathetic schmucks I scam, I won't even pretend to be sorry over. Not at all." Margaret wiped her eyes with the back of her free hand.
"I really did make a mistake with you, Spiegel. You were way too smart."
There were gunshots. They shone brighter than the Christmas lights that illuminated Ganymede like an iridescent jewel in a vast, unforgiving sea.