She honestly hadn't expected to end up there. But she was so preoccupied with being pissed at Jet that she hadn't paid very much attention to where she was going. Before she knew it, the Red-Tail was hovering over the hospital. And since she was already there, she might as well take a peek inside.
The doctors said Spike's condition hadn't changed, and Faye almost left then and there. But a feeling of morbid curiosity prodded her onward. She slunk up to the fifth floor and poked her head into Spike's hospital room with a great deal of trepidation. A part of her was sure that Spike would keel over when she was the only person in the room, just to spite her.
The doctor was right; nothing had changed. Spike was lying in bed, his head propped up with a pillow. His skin was unnaturally pale, almost white, and his usually huge, curly hair was matted to his head. In short, he looked... weak.
The IV and the constantly beeping monitors added to that impression, but they were not the cause of it. Spike had always been full of energy. Sure, sometimes he acted like a lizard sunning itself, but even then his reflexes were faster than lightning. Now that spark, whatever it was that made him what he was, was gone. Spike Spiegel had left the building.
Faye shuddered. She had barely looked at Spike since he had been admitted to the hospital, for precisely these reasons. It made her feel sorry for him, and she didn't want to feel sorry. She wanted to feel angry. Hell, forget angry, she wanted to feel furious. She wanted to grab him by the lapels of that stupid blue suit he always wore and shake some sense into him. A little yelling would be nice, too, just so long as she was the one doing it. But she couldn't very well do that to a vegetable. It would defeat the point. She wanted Spike to be there, to be staring at her with those two-tone brown eyes and listening, actually listening, to what she was saying. What she was really saying, not what was coming out of her mouth.
Yeah, like that would ever happen. She snorted in disbelieving amusement. Then she stalked over to a corner of the room and leaned against the wall, giving Spike her patented Glare of Death. She had no doubt that it really could kill someone, if she wanted it to. She just never tried hard enough.
"You're a real piece of work, you know that?"
No reply. Faye hadn't expected one, but it still stung. If Spike had just been ignoring her, she could have gone into a full-blown tirade with a clean conscience. But she didn't feel comfortable yelling at someone who honestly couldn't hear her, let alone yell back. She pulled out a cigarette and lit up, taking a moment to let the nicotine begin to flow through her system before she continued.
"I bet you're dying for a smoke, right about now."
Still no reply. Faye was very quickly coming to the decision that that she hated one-sided conversations.
"You know what I hate the most about you?" She took a moment to let that sink in, as if it had anywhere to sink into. "You honestly don't give a shit. You don't care what I want, what anyone wants. I don't think you even care about what you want, anymore."
Or maybe he didn't know what he wanted, which was probably worse. Faye took another drag on her cigarette.
"You know what I want? I want things to be the way they were. You know, before everything changed." She also wanted to wring his skinny little neck, but that was hardly a topic for civil conversation.
She could just hear Spike's reaction to what she had said. He would fix her with a patronizing expression and say, 'Yeah, catching 50 woolong bounties and eating dog food fresh from the can. Those were great times.' And, in his infinitely sarcastic way, he would have been right -- most of the time things had been bad, bordering on terrible. But every once in a while things had been okay. Good, even. And as for the rest of the time... well, misery loves company, and it was something that Faye happened to be very well-acquainted with.
She flicked the ash off her cigarette with a practice motion, then stared at the glowing end. "You didn't care what would happen to us when you left. That's another thing that pisses me off about you. You don't care about anyone." She considered that statement for a moment and then amended it. "Anyone but your precious dead Julia, that is."
That's what this all came down to, in the end. Julia. Sure, she had been beautiful, and she was one hell of a driver, but Faye didn't see what made her so special. In the end she was just a pretty woman, and there was certainly no shortage of them in the universe. If Spike had just curbed the attitude a little and maybe gotten a haircut, he could have had almost any woman for the taking. Why he had decided to try for the impossible was something Faye didn't understand.
Well, maybe she understood it. Maybe she understood it a lot better than she wanted to admit. But that didn't mean she had to approve.
Faye dropped her now spent cigarette to the ground and crushed it with the tip of her shoe. "I think I like you better this way. The conversations are nicer, that's for sure."
That was a lie. She would have liked nothing better than for Spike to sit up in that bed and ream out a scathing retort. But he wasn't going to, so there was no point in thinking about it.
"Well, that's enough sterling conversation for today. Goodbye, Mop-head." She straightened up and sauntered out of the room without a backward glance. She had no intention of shedding any more tears over that comatose idiot.
But a part of her, maybe the last remaining part that was truly honest, knew that she probably would anyway.
* * *
Jet was in the middle of a stand-off with one of his bonsai tree, and had been for the last hour and a half. He knew it needed trimming, but he and the tree could not seem to come to a conclusion about what branch to trim or how much it needed. Jet had done nothing but stare at it stubbornly for a good 45 minutes.
After one last examination of the tree in question, Jet stood up with a groan and walked out into the main living area. His back was sore from sitting so long. It brought to mind the time he had complained to Spike about back pains, which of course had started Spike in on an extensive list of herbal remedies that claimed to get rid of it once and for all. Of course, most of the so-called cures were so ridiculous and disgusting that they weren't worth the attempt....
But now, Spike was the one in need of medical attention.
Any bits of happiness that might have managed to accumulate for Jet in the past two hours were squelched in the space of two seconds. He had known from the beginning that it was wrong to let Spike go alone. He'd known that Spike had no intention of coming back alive from whatever destruction and mayhem he was planning to cause. If Spike awoke from his coma and discovered that he was still among the living, he would probably be disappointed.
And yet Jet had let him go alone. He still wasn't sure why. It went against his training, not to mention his sense of ethics. But it had seemed right at the time. There was no way he could have talked Spike out of it, and there was certainly no way he could have talked Spike into letting him go along. Still, if Spike had asked, he would have gone in a heartbeat.
Jet's thoughts were interrupted by the beeping of one of the Bebop's computer consoles. He hit a button and a communications window opened up, revealing the face of an old friend from the police force, Bob. The ghost of a smile flitted across his face. "Hey, Bob. How's it going?"
"I've got something for you, Jet," Bob said, leaning forward so that his face dominated the screen. "A big bounty, hasn't been officially released yet. Name's David Card. He's a government scientist turned biological terrorist. He was spotted yesterday evening on Mars."
Jet nodded curtly. Terrorists were always trouble. "How much?"
"150 million woolongs."
Jet whistled. "That's a nice catch."
Bob nodded. "Better watch out, though. This guy means business. And he's suspected of involvements with one of the Syndicates."
"Don't worry, I'll keep it simple." Jet paused while he considered what else to say. "How're things going with the force?"
Bob shrugged. "Shitty, same as always. How about with you?"
Jet smirked and replied, "Shitty. Same as always."
Bob chuckled. "Talk to you later, Jet. We should catch a movie or something soon. It'll be like old times."
Jet nodded noncommittally. "Yeah... just like old times."
Bob disconnected and Jet closed the window, staring at the motionless computer screen as if he was waiting for it to reveal the secrets of the universe. But it didn't, so he started the walk toward the docking bay. Halfway there, he heard the click of Faye's heels against the metal plating of the floor. His eyes narrowed and he stopped in the middle of the hallway as she came into view, arms crossed. "What took you so long?"
Faye shrugged. "Busy day." Her expression seemed veiled, although Jet didn't know what she had to guard against.
"How were the races?" he asked, voice riddled with sarcasm.
Normally Faye would have responded with a scathing comment, but she merely met his eyes with a tired, saddened gaze that caught him off-guard. "I gambled. I lost." She seemed to realize that a crack had appeared in her façade and she hurried to cover it up, smoothing her expression into a perfect representation of nonchalance. "How was your sojourn with nature?" She nodded toward the room where Jet kept his bonsais.
Jet eyed Faye suspiciously, not sure what to make of her momentary lapse in composure. "Quiet." Things were quiet pretty much all the time, with Spike and Edward gone. And, much to his surprise, he found that he had begun to miss the noise. "Listen, I'm going out for a while, so try to leave the ship in one piece."
Faye raised an eyebrow. "What, you've got a hot date?"
"More like a hot bounty," Jet remonstrated, not in the mood for Faye's particular brand of wit and cunning.
"And you haven't invited me along? I'm hurt." Faye stuck out her lower lip in a pout.
Jet rolled his eyes. "You want to come, Faye?"
"Nope," she exclaimed cheerfully. "I've had enough excitement for one day."
Now it was Jet's turn to raise an eyebrow. "It's 150 million woolongs."
"On the other hand, who doesn't like excitement?"
Jet sighed and accompanied her to the docking bay. He'd only told her how big the bounty was because he was tired of catching criminals on his own. Faye had been too busy gambling to go bounty hunting in the last three weeks, and while he'd actually managed to get a small sum of money stored away -- a stunning accomplishment, considering how quickly money seemed to disappear on this ship -- he missed having a second person to research with and being able to talk to someone on stake-outs.
As he climbed into the Hammerhead and prepared for take-off, he couldn't help
but think that he would have felt more comfortable if Spike had been coming
along for the hunt too.
Author's notes: Sorry if this seems a little slow-paced to anyone; I never promised a rollicking action-adventure fic. What I promised was description, and I've been doing my best at it. So far it's mostly been character and thought description, but I'm going to try my hand at physical description in the next chapter.... We'll also be exploring Spike's twisted psyche! Yay!
