Disclaimers: I wished for Cowboy Bebop for Christmas. But Watanabe-san still hasn't forwarded the title rights to me yet.
Rating: heavy PG-13 or light R, whichever way you look at it _
Something Beautiful
Everything's so blurry
And everyone's so fake
And everybody's empty
And everything is so messed up
Pre-occupied without you
I cannot live at all
My whole world surrounds you
I stumble then I crawl
- Puddle of Mudd "Blurry"
The malicious glee in his eyes gradually faded into a mixture of worry and disgust. Concerned, he brought a hand to her chin, and lifted her face until her purple eyes met his own mismatched ones. He looked deep in the empty orbs and sighed. Sadness bled into his gaze as he witnessed the degeneration of an ice queen.
"You can't even speak, can you?"
All he got in reply was a blank stare.
Chapter Four:
Faye trudged past the Redtail silently, leaving Spike to stand alone in the dark, sharing his thoughts with the shadows of the hangar. Purely on autopilot, her numb legs led her to the bathroom; the steady clicking sound of her boots echoing down the narrow empty corridor. A dog barked, and a furry head butted into her leg, but Faye barely registered the touch, and gave the annoying object a half-hearted kick. A canine whimper sounded, followed by an indignant human squeal, but Faye moved to block them out with a slam of the bathroom door. The breath slipped out of her until she was deflated, shriveled and spent.
The taste of terror still lingered in her mouth, pungent like fermented bitterness.
She was so tired. Her body was steeped with a bone-weariness that pulled at her limbs, and tightened the skin around her eyes, making her appear pinched and haggard. Her thoughts were a chaotic mess, all intense emotions and stilted dialogue, save one single clearing in the forest of confusion: her brief recovered memory.
Dots still marred her vision as she recollected the blinding color of confusion.
"What's the point of this memory-shit finally starting," Faye murmured to her hands, "when all I can see is a scene lacking a beginning or end, with no background or follow up."
Menacing hands reaching out to grab her.
She paused and cocked her head in contemplation. "Just…"
The desperation of being the prey: coagulated shock, a flash of pain, and a final darkness that was frighteningly decisive.
The fan whirled overhead, as Faye faced a grim conclusion. She had been hiding from someone, and from what she could gather from the brief snatches of scenes and emotions…
A swallowed cry.
"It must have ended badly."
The fan stopped for the moment, as if it were choked by the tension radiating from the stiff figure below.
Before she had succumbed to the pain, there it was- from out of shadows that hauntingly familiar smile looming out from the shadows, twisted with sadistic pleasure, and swallowing her screams in an empty void.
She stood there silently and would have continued to do so, hadn't the excited barking and babbling of a certain duo returned down the hall. Their noises bled through the door, sporadically punctuated by squeals and giggles. The limitless cheerfulness mocked her moment of self-pity. Faye hated it. By the time they traveled through the door and reverberated in the bathroom, the once melodious and carefree sounds steadily became warped and viscous until all that remained was a coagulated cacophony of bitterness and derision.
There was a tentative knock. "Faye-Faye 'kay? Taking awhile in the long-john!" A laugh sounded right outside the door.
She couldn't take it anymore. Faye clamped her hands hard on her ears and raised her face towards the ceiling. "Damn you, will you just go away?!" With a sudden burst of energy, Faye fisted her hands and kicked the door hard, almost freeing it from its hinges. In her mind's eye, the image of a persistent Ed and Ein was superimposed over the faded wood.
Silence.
Finally, Faye groused, they finally shut up, damn busybodies. But the lack of sound from the outside world failed to silence the angry chaos from within. The slow throbbing pulse in her head combined with the garish stilted images of her flashback culminated in a frightening rush of blood to the brain and almost brought Faye to her knees from the pain. Faye cringed and bit off a yell. Fucking hangovers hurt less than this.
She stumbled in front of the toilet, lowered the seat, and sat down. Lifting both hands to her pale face, she clutched at the purple locks on either of her forehead as she struggled for peace of mind and willed for her headache to disappear. But the son of a bitch persisted and remained. Kind of like a certain green-haired idiot I know, Faye smirked nastily.
Her eyebrows knit together in studied contemplation as she continued to ponder the idiot known as Spike. She scoffed. "Primitive Neanderthal. He's such a prig. It's all: 'Me, me, me', 'my, my, my', 'now, now, now'. I swear it's no work at all being a bitch when he's one too. Why can't he just keep his mouth shut for once?"
Or maybe put it to better use.
She stopped short when she visualized an accompanying image and blushed as red as Ed's hair. Where did that come from? Luckily for her, if there was one thing that she had learned to do with ease after her awakening, it was to deny, deny, deny. Think happy thoughts. Like that Peter Pan freak. But she had more important things to think about than a stray thought about the lunkhead. Like her current appearance. Faye caught her hazy reflection in the shower door and grimaced. She hadn't showered in what felt like ages and she was questionable as to what had been on that couch with her last night. Consequently, her blurred image made her hair look like rotting, molding…
"…scabby, lard-filled, maggot burger with turd on the side!" Childish giggles erupted on either side of the playground. A gangly girl stood imposingly over the shocked little boy, and made to punch his lights out, before he ran away with a squeal. The crowd of onlookers dispersed as quickly as they had come, leaving the fourth grader, save one. The fourth grader sighed. The little girl was still sitting there dumbly, like a purple-haired rock. She could tell that she was sensitive about what others said to her, but this was getting ridiculous.
"Hey, you!" No response.
With a groan, she approached the sniffling kid and proffered a hand to help her up. She didn't move to take it. "I know he said some pretty mean things, but seriously! Stop proving him right!" Slowly, the other girl looked up and met probing gaze. The other girl grinned fiercely when she saw her big green eyes.
"You're cute, Darling, but you need some guts. First things first: we need to add some words to your vocabulary." Pulling her up, they walked over to the flip bars and "Darling" was introduced to a whole new world filled with rapid fire insults, playing dirty, and street smarts.
By the time the lunch bell rang, her first lesson was over and they stood up to go back in. Before the taller girl ambled off, the other girl timidly asked her for her name. The other girl grinned and started running back to class before yelling over her shoulder, "Emma, and don't you forget it!"
Against her will, Faye's lips quirked at the corners into a reluctant smile, and the pain that her headache had been causing began to recede into a tender aching. Intuitively, Faye knew that the voice sounded faintly familiar, a long-forgotten relic from her ancient past and first life. Hope dimly bloomed in her chest.
Loud, obnoxious voices floated into poke at her hopeful bubble.
"Ed, give me back the remote!" Scuffle. "Damn, I'm getting too old for this."
Just a little more…
"Don't watch this, Spike-person! Ed wants to do this! Spike-person ought to try."
Faye began to clench and release her hands spasmodically, in time with the tick that appeared under her eye.
She waited for movement. There was a lull in the conversation as Ed presumably acted out what she had suggested as a substitute for entertainment. A short pause ensued, ended by a loud thump.
Silence.
"You're right, Ed. This tastes good." A delighted peal of slightly maniacal laughter drifted into Faye's tiny compartment. Faye sighed. The painful headache had now been replaced by a weary resignation. Deciding to ignore her own problems for the rest of the night, she just hoped for the sake of future generations that their abnormal behavior wasn't hereditary, in the case that any of them actually succeeded in procreating. As Faye got off the toilet seat and turned the knob to leave her private sanctuary, she was fairly sure that she was prepared to take on the fatherly glare, the giddy smiles, and the sardonic smirk that was the Cowboy Bebop crew. But Faye soon realized that she was apparently not.
It only took three seconds before Ed noticed the opening door, and shrieked, "Ed's got a surprise!" Suddenly, a bright mop of hair obscured her vision as Ed dropped from the ceiling to hang upside down by her feet. Bright and curious eyes met her irritated ones resolutely, and suddenly with a demented smile, as she swung her whole body in one great lurch towards a startled Faye. Before she could make a move to escape, they cracked heads, and Faye nearly fell from the impact. Putting up both hands to massage the throbbing temples, Faye was ready to give Ed the discipline she had coming to her for the last thirteen years. If it was one thing that she hated, it was immature, hyperactive kids that ran loose like rabid screeching monkeys. "Put a cap on it, Ed! What the hell are you …"
Her tirade was cut short as Faye looked on blankly as Ed deposited a small string-wrapped package in her hands. "What's this?" She asked cautiously, listening intently as she shook it a bit to discern what its contents were. Barely any sound. Letter bomb? Faye gave the small box a decisive shake. "Can't be a letter bomb. Who would take the time to send one to me?" Faye thought absently. Only people who know I live on the Bebop are the crew itself. And unless it's Spike, I doubt the rest would seriously want to maim me.
"No clue, Faye-Faye!" Ed chirped happily, grabbing the package and taking huge leap-frogs out of the bedroom into the television area where her faithful Tomato was propped at the foot of the couch. Placing the box carefully beside her, Edward Wong Hau Pepelu Tivrusky 4th, otherwise known as the infamous Radical Edward, began to do what Ed's do best. Typing with their toes upside down, of course.
For a moment, there was silence save the tapping of busy toes, until Tomato emitted a loud beep, which was quickly followed by Ed's pronounced, "All clear, Faye-Faye! Nothing in there to make the Bebop go 'Kablooey!'" With a short nod of thanks, Faye caught the box by the string and strode off to open it in privacy. Ed made as if to follow her, but her attention was quickly diverted when Tomato beeped again and a message popped up on her chess forum board.
"What?" Ed gasped. The unimaginable had come to pass. "Someone thinks they can defeat Ed?" She signed in and entered the game arena. The screen was infused with a rush of smiley faces. "Ed thinks not!" With a click of the mouse and a high pitched cackle, Faye and her mysterious package were soon forgotten.
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"I guess Ed found something else to entertain herself," Faye thought amusedly. She cut off the sound of the hacker's delighted ramblings with the click of her bedroom door and ambled over to the bed to further investigate her package. She wondered what it could be. She kept turning it over and over in her hands until she had the feel of the coarse brown paper engrained in her head.
"You know," she said to herself in a chiding tone, "it's most probably a compilation of all of the debts that I've accumulated over the years, typed out into one exhausting list." The thought of the lecherous, smarmy money-sharks made her cringe. "Well, let's see what those greedy bastards have to say." She reached down into her lap. For some reason, though, she had a feeling that it wasn't from them, and her heart began to pound with growing excitement.
She untied the knot.
There was something awfully familiar about the fibrous texture of the hemp string. Slipping her fingers along it evoked the beginning stirrings of…
She ripped the seam.
"Fear? That can't be right," Faye murmured. "What's so life-threatening about a bit of tie?"
She tore off the paper.
Faye carefully scrutinized the naked box. Nothing suspicious. And yet, warning bells were ringing in jumbled chaos. After living six years on the road with only her wits to get her by, Faye had learned to abide by those instincts. But why were they so adamantly opposed to a stupid, cardboard…
Carefully, Faye opened the lid.
The smell of jasmine floated out and captured her senses in a divine rush. As it infused the room in its heavy scent and fell about her, all of the breath whooshed out of her lungs, leaving her eyes wide and body drained in utter shock at the sight before her.
"Oh my God."
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Ed's hand froze, poised to click and end the sorry excuse for a game, when a loud scream echoed throughout the Bebop. Jet paused in his cooking to lean out of the kitchenette to nail a questioning glance at the yellow couch, where Spike had also raised his head in inquiry. All was quiet, until Jet finally decided to break the silence. But Ed beat him to it. "Was that Faye-Faye, Jet?"
Jet was perplexed. "Sure as hell if I know."
Spike shrugged and returned his attention to the television. Damn woman.
End Chapter Three
Author's Note: I'm so sorry about the delay! I got entangled in two impromptu road trips one after the other, and now with school starting, I'm a bit under the weather. Luckily, though, I already have the next chapter outlined, so that should be out soon.
I would also like to thank all the people who have reviewed my story so far. You guys are awesome, and I hope I don't let you guys down! :o)
