First off, I guess I'd just like to say for the record that I believe that Spike really did die at the end of the series (sadly 'nuff).  But, seeing as I just couldn't live with the fact that poor Spike finally up and died, I decided to go against the laws of all that was good and holy and intended and write a post-Bebop sessions fic, in which Spike is miraculously alive.  (Don't ask me quite how he survived, I'll make something mildly convincing up.) 

Also, I always was a quiet fan of a Spike/Faye relationship.  Yeah, once again, I am going to go against all that is good and holy and intended.  Although, I can say this isn't going to be one of those fics where they suddenly declare their adamant undying love for one another in little more than a paragraph.  See, I'm a fan of a Spike/Faye relationship…but only on certain grounds.  I believe that if Spike had never up and died, and eventually things were to continue the way they had been going…eventually, he and Faye probably would have come to some sort of understanding about the way they could have felt about each other (well, the way Faye did feel about him, and the way he could have come to feel about her).  Okay, does all of that make any sense?  Whatever.  I'm just going to quit yakking and move on to the damn story now…

Jet couldn't believe this shit.  It wasn't like he'd been resting on his laurels for the last two years or anything—matter of fact, it'd been pretty much business as usual, tracking down bounties and keeping the Bebop from completely falling apart.  Sometimes he had enough money left over to feed himself decently, and sometimes—but only sometimes—he even had the money to take a few extended fishing trips.  That was what the Bebop had been made for, in the first place.

Life sure as hell had been a lot easier with just himself to worry about.  Yeah, sure, it got kind of lonely at times, but he knew where Ed and Faye were, should he choose to contact them; which he did every once in a while just to make sure they were still alive and in a state of semi-normalcy.  Although normalcy was not usually a state he would associate with those two women…

The day had started out just like any other.  He'd woken up, fixed himself some breakfast (he'd recently had a quite sizable bounty, so breakfast was made from actual breakfast foods), and then gone out on the Bebop's deck to admire the day.  It was a gorgeous artificial spring day on Mars.  The Bebop was sitting in the harbour in Tharsis City, where she had been floating for the last two or three days.  Jet was feeling slightly lazy.  It was nice to just relax after nabbing a bounty.

He'd gone inside, given his bonsais a light sprinkling of water, and then out of sheer boredom, sat down and flipped on the telescreen to watch some stuff that was undoubtedly going to rot his brain out.  (There was never anything good on mid-morning television.)  Next thing he knew, he must have dozed off, because he woke up and he had that strange disoriented feeling that one gets after they've taken a nap in the middle of the day.  Jet had pulled himself up off the hideously yellow couch and ambled back out onto the Bebop's outdoor deck, to gaze about Tharsis' harbour.

Hell, wasn't like he had anything better to do.  But he wouldn't have it any other way. 

Jet was sitting in a small folding chair on the deck, pondering going inside to prepare himself a tuna-fish sandwich when the slight whining of jet engines above the Bebop made him shield his eyes from the sun and squint upwards.

The whining was getting louder.  The craft was obviously planning on landing on his damned ship, since there were no other ships about with sufficient landing space.  He scowled and continued to squint, wondering if maybe he had forgotten a planned visit from Ed or Faye, or maybe if he was getting some sort of special delivery mail or some such other bullshit.

The ship did look awfully familiar, though.  He was positive he'd seen that strangely reddish-pink colour of paintjob before… 

The ex-ISSP cop had stood up so quickly that he'd almost knocked over his flimsy little folding chair, and he was entirely sure that he'd broken out into a cold sweat.  Damn him if it wasn't the Swordfish landing on the Bebop—or perhaps his eyes were just playing tricks on him.  He had been hanging out by himself an awful lot lately.  Dead men don't fly ships.  They certainly don't fly ships back to visit their old bounty-hunter buddies, Jet, he chided himself.  Overactive imagination, that had to be it.

Jet thought his too-young-to-die thirty-eight year old heart was going to rupture a valve when the weathered craft finally set itself down on the deck. The sun-shield tint on the glass dimmed, and after the engines had gone into power-down mode, the hatch hissed and popped open, revealing a man that had managed to conveniently evade death—yet again.

Jet blinked, rapidly.  Perhaps the eggs he'd eaten this morning were bad.  Or perhaps he never had woken up from that nap on the couch and this was a dream.

"Before," the dead man began, standing in his craft and beginning to work his hands out of his all-too-familiar flight gloves, "before you go breaking out crucifixes and calling in priests to perform exorcisms, I think you should just stand there and be quiet while I explain some things to you, Jet."

He didn't have to be told twice.  Jet didn't think his voice was working at the moment, anyway.

That had been a little over two hours ago.  The beautiful day had stretched into the lazy golden glow of the afternoon, and still—Jet could not believe this shit.  Boom.  Just like that, Spike Spiegel had waltzed back into his life, seemingly from the dead.

Whatever faint sense of normalcy in life that Jet himself had been working for was effectively shot completely to shit.  There was a dead man sitting on his couch like he had never left, throwing his feet up on the disgustingly modern coffee table with just as little respect as he had always had for it.

"So I guess the obvious question would be why didn't you come back right after you got out of the hospital?" Jet asked in a semi-irate, semi-shocked tone, lurking in the doorway to the living room area.  "Why come back now, after two frickin' years?"

Spike snickered, and Jet almost lost his temper.  Almost.  Snickering, to him, seemed to be a highly inappropriate response, considering the circumstances.  "You've asked me that one three times now, Jet."  Spike rubbed lazily at his nose and slouched further into the couch, evidently more than ready for a siesta.  "Are you really that shocked that I'm still alive?  I mean, c'mon.  It is me, after all."

Jet scowled.  "Yes, I'm that damn shocked!  Official reports claimed that there had been no survivors at the scene of the headquarters.  I had some of my ISSP buddies lend us a bit of a hand in trying to piece together exactly what had happened, and the most we got out of it was that when the cops showed up, the building was collapsing on itself, there were dead bastards everywhere, and the Red Dragon Syndicate was more or less officially dead."  Jet chewed his lip a bit, and wondered whether or not he should add the next part.  He sighed, and continued.  "A bit more digging turned up some more dead bodies on the other side of Tharsis City—yer friend Annie, some kids whose names I don't remember, and…"

Spike's face still had a strangely sarcastic smile on it.  "…Julia?  Lying on the rooftop?  I know.  It's okay.  You can say it.  My head isn't going to explode or anything."

The older man shrugged, but silently decided to bring it up as little as possible in the future.  What Spike said and what Spike acted were two completely different things, Jet knew.  "Well, anyway—we never got a straight answer out of anyone besides the same line over and over again—no survivors."

"Well, gee, Jet, I'm hurt that you never figured better.  After all, weren't you a tad suspicious when your ISSP pals couldn't hook you up with my dead body?"  Spike seemed a bit smug at how well he had inadvertently orchestrated his own death—again.

Jet grunted.  "Didn't figure you had much of a body left, what with the shape they found Vicious in, and what the building looked like…" 

Spike stretched, yawned, and cracked his fingers behind his head; evidently, he was gearing up for an eventual nap.  Like the goddamned punk never left, Jet groused mentally.  "Well, whatever.  I suppose I'll answer your question again, since you seem so fascinated by it.  Seems the White Tiger Syndicate was so enthused at my decision to almost single-handedly take out their rivals, that they showed up on the scene not long after I passed out on the stairs, I'm guessing.  Next thing I know, I wake up in a hospital with a couple of White Tiger guys standing around me, telling me I'm lucky to have survived, blah blah blah…"

"Uh-huh," Jet interjected, making it clear that he got this part of the story.

"Apparently, they saved my ass because they wanted to try to get in on this, too."  Spike proudly jerked the lapels of his suit; one that bore a faint resemblance to his old one, but was obviously newer and in better shape, and in different colours.  "I, uh…kind of refused.  I mean, there I was, lying in a bed, bandaged from here to there and they were asking me to join a Syndicate again?  Riiiight.  Thankfully they were a lot more lenient with me than they probably would have been with your average schmoe…I think they were so overjoyed that I had killed all the Dragons and then wanted out completely that they were just kind of content to let me be."  The lanky man shrugged, fussing in his suit jacket for a cigarette, produced one, and lit it with little less than overly-theatrical flare.  In the cloud of dense smoke that followed, he paused dramatically.

"However, they claimed that what they'd done for me couldn't go without some kind of payment.  My hospital debts were…delicately put, they were a fuckload.  I had to work for them, at least for a while.  Mostly just some bullshit recon crap they had me do because, after all, I am a master of stealth.  So I was busy with that for quite some time, and finally, I got my debts paid off, they struck my name from the records, I shook hands and was all polite-like, and then I split."

Jet's eyebrow twitched.  "And then?"

"Then I got bored and decided to come find you."  Spiegel laughed, carelessly ashing his cigarette on the metal floor of the Bebop, causing Jet's eyebrow to twitch some more.  "Cheer up!  You should be glad I'm here, old man.  Looks like you need some spice in your life, here.  I'm just the thing for it!"  Spike winked at Jet, who sighed and put his face in his hands, still obviously shaken by the whole situation. 

Who wouldn't be? He asked himself.  He's supposed to be DEAD!  "When did you get so damned egomaniacal?" the large man asked of the ghost sitting on his couch, looking tired already.

The ghost favoured the older man with slow smirk.  "Cheating death will do that to a man."

The couch.  The yellow couch.  The vinyl yellow couch.  It was a testament as to why living room furniture should never be made out of vinyl—he'd slept on it enough times to be able to write a thesis paper on it, for Christ's sake.  There wasn't anything quite like waking up in the morning and finding your bare skin stuck to the fake-leather surface.  The agony of having to peel yourself from the surface after a moment of realization was quite exquisite, as well. 

Strangely enough, he'd kind of missed peeling himself off that couch every morning (well, late afternoon, but what the hell).  Spike tossed his black jacket onto the coffee table and kicked off his shoes, flopping backwards and exhaling sharply.  Some of his hair ruffled up, and then came to rest on his forehead again.  Unconsciously, he rubbed his face a bit and realized he needed a good shave.  Bah, whatever.  There was always tomorrow.

Over the last two years the formerly dead man had found himself thinking precisely that thought more and more.  There's always tomorrow.  That was something that he never would have thought two years ago.  Back then he seemed to be waiting for everything to hurry up and end so he could start over again.  Start over again with Julia, buy a dog, get a house with a lawn, and maybe—just fucking maybe consider having some kids.  Hell, if he was willing to go as far to get a dog, kids weren't much different, were they?  He'd often wondered back then what he would do for a job when he finally began his normal life.  He always thought he'd make a good journalist, or maybe a novelist.  Maybe a musician on the side, start playing the trumpet or something weird like that.  

His hopes for normal life had died along with Julia on that rooftop, blood dribbling out of her mouth as she looked up at him, lithe fingers clutching at his sleeves, silently willing him to make her life last a little longer.  After all, Spike was certain that Julia knew as well as he did that his life was worth jack shit without her.

That hadn't mattered.  Julia died, the last little bits of her precious, fucked-up life spluttering out on that rainy, blood-soaked rooftop while he stood there like a tool, helpless. 

And then blah blah blah, depression, withdrawl, anger—what the hell were those steps again, the ones that people went through when dealing with grief?  Spike was pretty sure that there were five of them, or something.  His hand rubbed his eyes, and he decided to let it drop.  Yeah, admittedly, he'd gone through some pretty rough times right after he'd woken up in the hospital, and there'd been a couple of times he himself wasn't sure at all if he'd make it through the night, the urge to just end it all was so strong.  After a while, though, shockingly… the pain started to fade.  Life started to be at least halfway-tolerable again, and it was then that he realized that Julia or no, he enjoyed living for the sheer act of it.  It wasn't half bad, this whole life thing.  The acceptance of the Julia or no part of the deal took him a bit longer than everything else, but eventually after quite a few drunken epiphanies (during one of which he was vehemently sure that he had actually communicated with Julia herself), he started to let her go, slowly but surely.

Sure, he still loved her.  God damn he still loved her.  He was quite possibly the closest case to physical necrophilia that had ever existed, but… he wasn't living for her, anymore.

At twenty-nine, Spike Spiegel was starting to get a little living in for himself.  It was kind of fun.  At times it was little more than educational and full of hassles, but for the most part, it was kind of…novel.  Life.  Ain't it grand, his brain cracked.

"Hey Jet," Spike hollered, knowing the other man was about somewhere on the Bebop.  If he just lay there and hollered for long enough, he knew eventually the other man would respond.  "Hey JET!"

"What?!" came the agitated reply from the distance.  The sound of heavy-footed clomping was heard, and then Jet was standing in the doorway, wearing a pair of reading spectacles.  Spike resisted the urge to comment, but couldn't manage to keep the look of mirth off his face—which was, to his dismay, starting to reveal some signs of his age.  There were a few more lines around his eyes and his mouth than had been there only a few months ago.  He was almost thirty, after all.

"So whaddya wanna do?" Spike asked, sounding non-plussed.  Jet rolled his eyes, and removed his glasses to glare half-heartedly at Spike.  The receiver of the glare didn't seem to notice it, therefore reducing its power to nil.

"You called me out here just to ask me that?"  Jet shrugged, and actually smiled for the first time since Spike had landed.  "Well, hell.  I don't know.  I didn't figure you'd want to be so active so quickly, having been dead and all," he jested, to which Spike rolled his eyes.  "Whatever.  I'm an old man, Spike.  I don't do much of anything anymore."

"Aw, shucks," tsked the man on the couch.  He propped himself up some so he could better see Jet.  "Well, what can we 'old men'," Spike actually emphasized the 'old men' part with quotation marks made with his fingers, "do together?  I'm not as young as I used to be, either, buddy.  I'm pushin' thirty, here.  After thirty, life's as good as over—well, so I hear, anyway."

"Watch it, kid," Jet snapped in mock agitation.  "I've been after thirty for a while."

"Obla di, obla da, oh oh oh and life goes on."  Spike swung himself around into a sitting position with such ease and grace that it was plain to see that the previous old man jokes had been simple jest.  "So let's celebrate our longevity and go out.  I know of a couple nice bars in good ole Tharsis that I don't have to worry about being spotted at anymore."  He caught Jet's 'I'm Not Too Sure About That' look, and offered him a wide smile, spreading his hands.  "Hey, look, it'll be on me.  I got the dough if you don't.  Bebop still sucking up money like old times?"

Jet shook his head slowly, wondering how Spike had managed to convince him with so little of a fight.  "Yeah," he muttered, half to himself and half to the man grinning in front of him.  "Just like old times."

Jet was feeling pretty damn good.  He was about six or seven beers deep, and Spike had been drinking whisky sours like they were water.  It was starting to become blatantly evident that before the night was over Spike was going to probably have some problems walking, talking, or even remembering doing either.

Jet shrugged and took another swig of his beer, admitting to himself that it was a decent bar, decorated in a subtly classy way that reminded him of some sort of bar that you would see in a sitcom on TV.  The stained-glass light fixtures, the polished bar, the friendly and attentive barkeep, the small but lively crowd who associated like they were all old friends.  Yeah, it was all in place.

"Y'know," Spike mumbled, cigarette stuck between his lips, eyes squinted to avoid getting the smoke in them, "I used to be a pretty mean shot.  In pool, that is," he added as an afterthought, and indeed, he was holding a pool cue, sharpening the end with the little chalk block.  "Whaddya say, Jet?  Play me a game?  Or are you too drunk to perform?" he asked with a snicker and a sway, and he slammed the chalk down on the corner of the table.  He took the cigarette out of his mouth and grabbed his drink with the same hand while Jet gave a little 'what the hell' face and started reaching into the pockets and tossing the balls out onto the table. 

"You break or I break?" Jet asked, tossing the thirteen ball up and down in his metal hand.  Spike wiggled his eyebrows and took a drink.

"Ooh, lucky number thirteen," he commented, and then nodded at Jet.  "I'm breaking."

"You got it."  The metal hand set the thirteen down and grabbed the rack, rolling all the balls into place.  He rolled the cue ball down the table at Spike, who stilled it with a long index finger and set his drink down.  Jet grabbed his own cue (and narrowly avoided knocking a few more down), and watched as the other man geared up to make his break, his cigarette dropping a few errant ashes onto the green fabric of the table.

Spike looked like he was pouring his whole being into the shot.  Jet noticed him studying the shot critically with his false eye—briefly, Jet wondered if the eye had some sort of weird calculating device that would make it easier for Spike to thoroughly school him.  Jet had never been much good at billiards, anyway.

"So," he said, lighting up a cigarette of his own, "what're you going to do now, Spike?"

The ceaseless movement of the cue stopped, and Spike blinked, his concentration broken.  "God damn it, I'm trying to make a shot here," he growled, and then wrinkled his nose.  "What's it matter?"

Jet could have hauled across the floor and smacked the kid then, after that comment; although he was quite sure that Spike would have been drunk enough to smack back.  He sputtered a bit, and frowned deeply when the shot was finally made and at least three or four different balls went sailing into pockets.  "What does it matter?" he asked, irately.  "You just suddenly show up out of the blue, 'Hey, I'm not dead', and then you're just going to disappear again?  Why even come back at all, then?"

Spike sharpened his cue again and sniffed as the dust got into his nose.  "I'm stripes," he replied, as if it were viable answer to the question, and then waved his hand at Jet.  "Oh yeah, oh yeah.  Aw, Jet…are you asking me to marry you?  I mean, 'cause you might as well, 'cause you're acting kind of…wife-ish right now."

Jet told himself that the lack of caring for his feelings on Spike's part was due to the inebriation.  "Damnit, seriously.  I'm asking because whether or not you know it, you disrupted my life rather nicely today, and I'm just wondering if you had a reason for it, or if you just did it for shits and giggles. Also, I'm kind of curious as to what you're going to do now that you're not indebted to the White Tigers anymore."

Spike was oddly silent, and then simply took his next shot, knocking in another striped ball.  His thin lips were somewhat puckered, as if he were pondering his next words, and then finally, he spoke.  "I've got some plans.  I caught wind of a few things.  But we have to wait."  Yet another striped ball fell.  "I'll let you know what's up when the time is right.  You might not like it, but I've given it a lot of thought.  If we play our cards right, we might not ever have to make any plans, ever again."

Jet blinked.  What the hell is he talking about?  Now he was curious, and whatever inclination to play pool that he might have had vanished like a vapour.  "Explain."

"I can't.  Not now, anyway.  I can tell you right now that you probably won't go along with it at all," Spike admitted, pensive, "but I know people who will.  Rather, a person.  And until then…I guess you're stuck with me."  He paused.  "Yeah, I'll hang around for a while.  But sure as shit when I tell you my plans you might kick me out on my ass."

Spike took another drink, seemingly relishing Jet's utter confusion and suspicion.  Then, on second thought, he finished the sour off.  Slamming the glass down on the corner of the pool table hard, he looked across at Jet through the smoky air and the glow of the overhead light.  "If we do it, we're going to need help."

"Of what kind?" Jet asked, quirking an eyebrow upward.

"The inherently dishonest kind," Spike said, a smirk creeping across the lower half of his face.  "The Faye Valentine kind."

Jet put his face in his hands, moaning.  "Oh, Jesus H.  Next you'll be telling me you wanna track Edward down, too."  He lifted his hand from his face to look over and Spike and there was silence.  The look on Spike's face said it all.  "Oh.  Oh.  You're not serious, are you?"

Spike stalked around the pool table, indicating it with the end of his cue.  "You'd better make a move.  Go ahead.  I'll give you a sporting chance before I go ahead and win.  But I'll tell you this much."  He swung the pool cue around to point it at Jet's face, coming within a dangerous distance of swiping Jet's nose with the end of it. 

Spike stared down it like it was the barrel of his Jericho.  "We wait for a bounty.  Not just any bounty—the right kind of bounty.  It should be coming up soon, if my sources are correct—the little fuckers, they'd better be right."

Jet eased himself away from cue-point and sidled up to the table.  "Well, whatever.  I'm not gonna say anything about your little 'plan'.  I think it might just be the whisky talking.  I'm going to humour the dead guy."