A/N: BOO!!!!!! Guess who!!! Yup! It's me! Fallenangel!! (and lots of !!!!!!!!! ^.^) I have been triumphant in my battle with the horrible monster, Writer's Block, [insert dramatic music here] and I am back on track!!!! But, sorry to say this is the next-to-last chapter!!! How sad… Yes, my friends, Widow's Waltz is nearing the conclusion!!!! ::tear::
Must thank loyal reviewers!
MISOKS: (cool name) Well thank you very much! Funny you should mention the rest of the crew… MWAHAHAHA!!!!
LADY OF LIGHT: Hey you! I've been missing talking to you… ::sniff:: Arigato for the review!
WATCHDOG210: I'm glad you liked ch. 17! Yes, I was kidnapped by the dread monster, Writer's Block, [insert dramatic music here], but I'm back now! Hey, I'm glad you've got a new(ish) car! And yes, as soon as you have a rough draft(ish) thing, send it to me, and I would be HAPPY to look over it for you!!!! Ttyl!
EVILRYOKOJESSEANDFIEND: Yeah, I agree with you. They're just spastic. You saw Holes? Lucky! I was sooooo busy, that I totally missed it! ::tear:: But I guess that's why it comes out on video… eheh… And no I'm not like 20, don't worry. At the time you reviewed, I was actually only 14!! But it's been so long since I updated, that I'm now 15… eheh… I'm glad you liked my methods. I don't know how they weaseled into my head, but whatever! (PS. I've read both your fics and I love them!! I can't review, because my 'puter doesn't allow pop-up windows, but I think they're really good! Keep up the good work!)
LORDANHUR: Arigato gozimasu!
COWGIRL13: Hey you! I'm so glad that you're back from hiatus! YES, EVERYONE! COWGIRL13 IS BACK!!!!!! Yay! Talk to you soon!
AMAZING_JOE: Well thank you very much! I very glad that you like my work! ::sniff:: You're too kind!!! Oh and the clothing… Um, I kinda forgot about it… Whoops… HEHE!! I have a bunch of strange fics that I've written, but haven't posted because I worte them out by hand, and it's too much work to type… eheheh… And I will check out your stuff asap!!! And there's a certain K-9 sniffing around in this chapter. Do enjoy!
HEALERARIEL: HAHAHAHA!!!! (no I'm not laughing AT you…) It's so funny that you can predict Slayers!! HEHE!!! No, this is not a mean laugh!
KIT: Cliffhangers make the fanfic world go 'round, my dear. Just think of it as my way to encourage physical fitness and buff up your arms!!! (or you could think of it as my inability to write… eheh) And Spike's lie, well… Just read this chapter! Air shafts are so weird! In the spy movies, they're always used for escape routes, but I can't even fit in mine! And Faye is crawling in front of Spike, so she crawled over the grate first, thought she saw someone inside and kept going. Spike, who is crawling behind her, crawls over the grate after her, and notices the room is empty. ::pants:: Pheew!!!! Arigato mas!
::pants:: geez!! I didn't realize I had so many reviewers!!!! I don't want to annoy everyone by taking up space before the story, so the rest of you reviewers I will that and the end of the chapter.!! Hey, guess what? I ONLY NEED 9 MORE REVIEWS BEFORE I HIT 200!!! YOU GUYS ARE AWESOME!!!! (I'll include another thank you list!)
Now, I'm sorry about the first part of this chapter. I tried to write it while battling the dread monster, Writer's Block, [insert dramatic music here], so it kinda sucks. But the end is better! Once I finish the story (ONE CHAPTER TO GO BABY!!!), I'll go back and re-write it.
Alright, enough chit-chat. Sit back, relax, enjoy, and review Chapter 18!! Savvy?
Spike dropped silently into the room, landing in a crouch, his gun in one hand, cocked and ready.
He scanned the room quickly, before motioning for Faye to come down.
She dropped soundlessly next to him, wincing slightly. "Oooh… When I find that leader guy, I'm gonna make him pay for my massage…"
Spike rolled his eyes, too smart to point out that massage bills were the least of their worries. He didn't want to be permanently singing soprano. "Alright." He hissed, holstering his gun, and sitting down. "I think we're safe here."
"Wrong again…" said a strange voice.
Spike sprang to his feet, cursing, and he felt Faye leaning against him, covering his back. "Who said that? Why are you chasing us?" he shouted.
A ring of men stepped forward, appearing out of the shadows. They all held guns trained on Spike and Faye.
"Drop the weapons." Said that voice, echoing all around the room.
First Spike, then Faye let their guns clatter to the floor. "I told you I saw people in here!" she hissed.
As if that was a signal, the ring of men surrounding them opened, and several figures appeared in the gap. One was large, broad-shouldered and tall, the other slim and willowy. Their forms were cast in shadow, hiding their identities.
Faye stepped up next to Spike, facing these new menaces. Her hand brushed his, causing a grin to tickle the corners of his mouth. Wordlessly, he clasped her hand.
"Well, well, well… What have we here?" the taller form seemed to be the source of the strange voice.
Spike glared. "I could say the same."
"What do you want from us?" asked Faye harshly.
The thinner form giggled, a strange reedy sound. "For prisoners, you are quite bold."
Spike smirked, his eyes hard. "Bold, stubborn, a jackass, it's all the same. Before I become all meek and fearful, I want to see our captors' faces. See what asses really look like in their human form."
The two figures looked at each other, and then stepped forward, into the light.
Instantly, Spike had sunk into a jeet kun do stance, ready to charge forward. At the same time, Faye had stepped behind Spike and lightning fast, grabbed her gun off the ground, cocked it, and aimed it at the figures.
They were dressed identically in all black; suits, shoes, shirts, ties, sunglasses, the whole shebang.
But Spike noticed something, and his mouth fell open. The thunk of Faye's gun dropping to the floor meant that she noticed the same thing.
The taller figure had a cybernetic arm, and the smaller one had green hacker goggles dangling around her neck.
"Jet?" asked Spike in shock.
"E-Edward?" queried Faye from beside him.
Jet and Ed, for it was they, grinned.
Faye rushed into Jet's arms, and he spun her around and around, laughing. Ed launched herself at Spike, throwing them both to the ground in a pile of arms and legs.
After a few minutes of hugging, they switched partners. Ed wrapped her legs around Faye's waist, hugging her neck, while Faye squeezed her tightly. Jet and Spike just stared at each other solemnly, and then simultaneously burst into laughter, pounding each other on the back.
"So, this whole time, it's been you guys who've been attacking Faye and I?" Spike asked incredulously, sipping his coffee.
Jet nodded, grinning, and Ed giggled. "We knew you two have liked each other forever, but you were both so damn stubborn that neither of you would admit it! And when Spike went off to get himself killed, it just tore me up to see how sad Faye was. When he came back, things were looking up again. But nooooo, that wouldn't work either, and the both of you left. So I called Ed, and we got together and came up with this plan that took us FOUR YEARS to implement. We had to call in some extra help…"
Jet nodded to Ed, who sprang onto the ceiling, crawled across it, and opened the door with her feet.
A large crowd of people slowly filed in.
There was Madame Breilloule, her bodyguard, and her butler, the leader and the guys who had attacked Faye in the alley, Jonathan, Lord Sullivan and Marissa, Rico, large amounts of Syndicate goons, Hugh, his bodyguards, the blonde hooker Spike had slept with after his fight with Faye, three random old guys who Spike had been seeing just randomly hanging around him and Faye, and another old guy who Spike finally realized was Sedgewick Bell, completely alive and already passing money to Spike's blonde hooker.
Faye felt her jaw going slack. "Are you serious? All these people were in on it?"
Jet nodded. "Yup."
Spike looked at Faye. "Seems as if we were the last to know…"
She sighed. "I'm trying to be mad, but it seems I'm failing miserably. This was so sweet of you Jet! Aside from all those people who were trying to kill me…"
Jet grinned. "But I took care of that, didn't I? We got Spike to come protect you! And then you fell in love and now everything is going to end happily ever after!"
But Faye's smile faded. "I…I…" she looked up at Spike, burst in to tears, and fled the room.
Spike blinked, confused. "What?"
Jet sighed and shook his head. "You started it Spike. Now you got to clean up your mess…" he jerked his head towards the door Faye had previously run through. "And you better hurry, because we should be reaching the Bebop soon."
Spike nodded, and hurried after Faye. Halfway out the door, he stopped and turned back to Jet. "I owe you one, man."
Jet grinned. "Nah. Consider it a debt paid."
Spike grinned, and disappeared into the corridor.
Jet listened to the sound of Spike's footsteps retreating, before turning to the crowd of actors who had been helping him out. "Alright people. Nothing to see here. You've all been paid. Let's go, come on." He shooed them out of the room. "We'll be sure to invite you to the wedding…"
Spike tracked Faye to a room at the end of the corridor. The door was open, and he could see that she had found a small bedroom. She was sprawled across the bed, sobbing into the pillow.
"Faye?" he called softly, rapping lightly on the open door with his knuckles.
She sat up quickly, sniffing slightly. "Oh. It's you." She wiped her eyes.
Spike strode silently across the room, and sat down next to her, offering her his handkerchief.
Wordlessly, she accepted it. "What do you want?" she asked.
He sighed. "Faye, I just wanted you to know, that if I ever said or did anything that hurt you, I never meant to."
She looked up at him, still skeptical. "What about all those things you said back on Callisto, after we… you know. I know you were trying to hurt me, then."
Spike scrubbed his face with one hand. Apologies were hard for him, and she wasn't making it any easier. "I…I don't know what was going on in my head there. I guess it's easier to get angry, than to accept the truth. All that stuff you said about Julia was true."
Faye looked up at him in askance.
He focused his gaze on the wall, trying not to meet her eyes. "Yes, she did sleep with me, just because she was tired of Vicious. Yes, she did use me. Yes, I did deny it. Yes, a lot of people died because of what we did. Yes, I was stupid! Yes, I was blind!" He stopped, panting. "But Faye, you have to understand. I loved her. Wrong or right, I loved her. Probably still do. You just have to accept that. She's still got claim to a big part of my heart, and you need to accept that. You need to accept me. All of me. Julia, Vicious, everything. Because I love you, all of you, and it hurts when you don't love all of me, too."
Tears began to trickle slowly down Faye's face. "Spike, I…I…"
With a sigh, he heaved himself off the bed. "I understand Faye. Don't worry, I'm not mad. Well, see you around." He turned and walked out of the room.
Spike strode back into the main room, where Jet and Ed looked up hopefully. "Where's the docking bay?" he growled. Even though he had told Faye he wasn't, Spike was pissed. Pissed at himself for revealing all that. Pissed that he had lost control of his emotions in front of Faye. Pissed that he had gone all mushy again. Pissed that he had told Faye that he still loved Julia. She probably hates me now…
Jet pointed wordlessly to a door in the corner, looking worriedly after his ex-partner.
Back in the bedroom, Faye sat frozen on the bed. "Oh, Spike…" she whispered. "Wait! What am I doing?!" she shot to her feet and took off running. "Wait!"
When Faye stumbled into the main room, Jet grinned and silently pointed to the door in the corner.
Faye found Spike climbing into the Swordfish II. On a hunch, he had guessed that his ship would be there. He had guessed right, and was determined to get out of here. He would go somewhere where no one knew him, and no one would ever find him. Pluto. He thought.
Faye felt her heart freeze in her chest as she watched Spike hoist himself onto the wing of the Swordfish and open the cockpit. He's really leaving. As in, not coming back… She jerked back to reality. Don't let him leave again!
"SPIKE!" she yelled. "SPIKE, I LOVE YOU!"
Spike froze, standing on the wing of his ship. His heart literally stopped.
"I love you." Faye repeated. "All of you. Even the part still wrapped around Julia. I love it all."
He turned, disbelieving, to see her standing in the doorway of the hangar, tears running down her cheeks, and a sad smile on her face.
Spike clambered down from his ship, and Faye ran across the docking bay towards him. He caught her and kissed her, swinging them around in crazy circles.
After a moment of frenzied happiness, he paused and looked down at her, cradled in his arms. "Do you really mean it?"
She smiled then, a wonderful, glowing smile. "Of course, you big lunkhead!"
"Then," he reached inside his suit jacket and pulled out a small, black velvet box. "Will you marry me?"
A/N: Well? Like it? Hate it? Tell me!
REVIEWER THANK YOUS: CONT'DNAMI: Hehe! I live to serve, and I serve to please! Happiness, coming right up!
SILENT SONG: Arigato gozimasu!
BLOOKNABURG: Blookie! Hey you! How's life? I misseth you! Thanks so much for the review, and I'll ttyl!
ICYFIRE: Arigato mas!
VANILLAROSE: Thank you so much for the sweet review! I'm glad you like it! Thanx again!
LISA: HEHE!!! Thanks for such an enthusiastic review! I enjoy reading them! And the dominatrix thing… I'm not quite sure where that came from… eheh… Let's just say, my stories have a mind of their own. THANKS AGAIN!
RED-TENKO: Fank ewe vewy muk! Ehehe! Arigato mas!
PHEEW!!! All done!