Disclaimer: Don't own Cowboy Bebop.
Well, I finally updated! Sorry it took so long! FORGIVE ME! *falls onto knees* I thanked all the reviewers at the end! Please continue to review! And now, the mystery of Jet's death - SOLVED!
~~~~~
Vicious was in the news again, actually making the headline. He had murdered some big, important business man and they had blown up this awful picture of him from when he was in jail and put it on the front page. He looked terrible, grim and half-dead. Obviously, while the last crime had been petty, he was now a serious offender who would be either sentenced to death row or living the rest of his life in prison - if they could catch him.
I doubted they could.
Throwing down the paper in disgust, I growled, "And that - is the man I love."
Ed was fiddling with her laptop again, 'oohing' and 'ahhing' about every five seconds. I tried my best to ignore her.
Things were going well enough, but life was boring. I needed to get out of this horrible rut. Maybe that's why I took up a bounty that I knew I probably couldn't handle, although I insisted I could. I even took Ed with me, but only because she insisted she could help. Hey, it's not like I was her mother. The kid could do as she pleased.
"Ed don't like this..." she said in a lilting, playful voice as we stopped in front of the abandoned warehouse.
Ed and I had tracked the bounty thus far, having learned that this had been her most recent hideout. It was a she this time - a fifty-something woman named Taylor Dunmore, guilty of drug dealing and nearly twenty murders in the last year. Seven of those were bounty hunters, much like myself. She'd been a nurse who had turned to stealing drugs and medication from the hospital and selling them to the patients who came in due to overdose. She'd killed a few people to cover it up, and then done away with a few more just for fun, it seemed.
"Oh, Ed," I sighed dramatically. "Use proper grammar. Stop referring to yourself in third person. And if it starts to get too tough, we get out, ok?"
"Hmm..." Ed still didn't look sure.
I told the girl to wait while I went in to check things out for clues that others might have overlooked. It was probably going to be a dead end, but you have to start somewhere.
The moment I stepped inside, I knew something was wrong.
This place looked very well lived-in, but that was impossible. The last bounty hunter we had talked to had said that he'd been there just the week before and it was completely empty, but worth a look. And what a look it was.
A half-finished carton of fried rice sat on a low table, and there were tousled blankets that had obviously been slept in the night before. There were empty beer cans scattered about the floor, but no one was in sight. Really, it made me edgy. She wasn't supposed to be here! I was unprepared and suddenly very nervous.
I started to back out the door, but squared my shoulders instead. No. I needed money. And perhaps someone had only spent the night here and left early in the morning. Yes, that had to be it. And so, with courage renewed, I stepped forward and began to slowly approach the next room with gun in hand, finding it perfectly empty and layered in dust. The dirt and grime was so thick that it soiled my shoes, and thick clouds rose beneath my feet, filling my lungs until I choked on a cough.
The next room was much the same, providing no clues, and by then there was a niggling of doubt in my stomach, so I decided to trust my instincts and began to take leave. However, just when I was about to enter the first room again, soft footsteps penetrated my hearing and I whirled around, back to the wall, sucking in a deep breath and trying not to panic. Crap, crap, crap! This was NOT good.
"Faye-Faye?"
I peeked around the corner and breathed an angry sigh of relief. Ed was standing hesitantly in the doorway, blinking green eyes at me in fascination. "Ed!" I scolded. "I told you to stay outside!"
"But I wanted to tell you something," she protested, hands on her hips, frowning a little.
I found myself scowling. "What?"
Her face brightened at my offer to listen, like I had just given her some sort of great invitation. "Well," she said, grinning, "when you were going in, I walked around back and guess who I found sneaking out the back door!"
"Vicious?" I asked sarcastically.
"Nooo," she replied, shaking her head enthusiastically. She raised her arm and gestured for me to follow her as she began to step outside again. "Come and see. Come!"
What to do with little girls? I began to reluctantly follow, not sure what I was to find, or even if it was worth the energy to walk out to the car we had rented. I still wanted to look around the first room a little for some signs of where Taylor Dunmore might currently be, but Ed was not to be put off in matters like this, and I could not concentrate with the child following at my heels. She'd probably found nothing of importance - a stray cat or dog or something.
"Look! Look! Look!" Ed sang, dancing out to the car and stopping to peer in the back seat, her happiness rapidly fading. "Oh my," she sighed, pressing her hands to the glass. "He fell asleep!"
"Who?" I demanded, stalking over. "Don't tell me you let a BUM into our car! This is a rental, Ed!"
"He is not a bum," she sniffed, looking at me defiantly.
I moved past the child and shoved her out of the way, not cruelly, but certainly forcefully. With a tired sigh, I bent down and glared through the tinted window, only to gasp and desperately claw at the door handle, ripping it open.
"Jet!" I gasped, gawking at the man curled up in a fetal position on the back seat, lying on his side with his feet towards my end of the car, head in the opposite direction. He was dirty and his clothes, the same as the ones I had last seen him in, were tattered. What was the worst, though, was that his one arm curled around his body protectively while the other, the robotic one, was flat out missing.
Since he didn't respond except to curl around himself a little more, I assumed he had passed out or was close to doing so. But he was supposed to be dead, wasn't he?! What was he doing hiding out in Taylor Dunmore's recently ransacked lair, and why was all this happening to me?!
"ED!" I screeched. "Get in the car! We need to go!"
"Kay," she replied easily, scrambling into the passenger side and hefting Ein into her lap. The brown and white Corgi squirmed and barked excitedly.
I noticed than with a little bit of pity and more anger that Jet was bleeding from a hidden wound and staining the rental car until it was most likely beyond repair. "Oh, this is great!" I seethed, hopping into the driver's seat and yanking on my seat belt to jerk down so I could buckle it. With the way I was about to be driving, I was certainly going to need it.
~~~~~
Jet couldn't explain to me what was going on. I doubted he would be able to even if he was awake enough to talk. But, for the moment, he was unconscious on the apartment bed, limbs splayed in all directions. It'd been quite a task lugging the heavy man up the stairs with only Ed's help, and avoiding being seen was even harder, but with that accomplished, I realized that all might be a piece of cake compared to repairing his badly damaged body.
"Ed," I instructed my redheaded helper, "get some warm water and the towels from the bathroom. Bring the bandages and the first-aid kit from the closet and be quick about it!"
"Yes, Faye-Faye!" she said, and scampered off obediently, only to return a mere minute later. It seemed as if the child moved with lightning speed. "Here. What now?"
"Just...stay still. I might need something else." I was grimacing and working on peeling off Jet's blood-soaked shirt, nearly gagging when I saw the massive wound across his chest. It was pretty deep towards the left end, but got more shallow the further towards his heart it traveled, which was good, I supposed. Also, it seemed as if it hadn't happened too recently, for it was already caked with dried scarlet fluid and attempting to scab over, though from the looks of the oozing, yellow-white pus it was also very infected. "Oh, this is disgusting!" I cried, looking to the girl beside me to see how she was handling it.
Ed stared quizzically at Jet, murmuring in confusion, "Where'd his arm go...?"
I briefly looked upon his shoulder and the nub of flesh where the arm should've been connected. "He must've lost it or sold it or something," I grumbled, realizing how preposterous it would be for Jet to sell a limb after the words had left my mouth. "Never mind. It's not important. He can get a new one."
"Oh."
I dipped a white cloth in the basin of warm water and gently began to wash his bare torso of the dried blood. He'd lost some weight. Don't get me wrong - he was still a massive man, but it was obvious he hadn't been eating too well.
Ed watched with wide, green eyes as the basin of water clouded with wisps of red liquid.
I moved on up towards the wound, watching Jet's face for signs of discomfort. He wrinkled his large, angled nose a few times, his thin lips twitching, but didn't move otherwise. Carefully, I began to wipe at the tender, purpling skin around the slash, seeing the lines around his eyes crinkle as he squeezed them shut tighter.
"Ed," I murmured, "get a cold cloth and put it over Jet's forehead. I think he has a fever."
She listened, compliant and silent for once in her life.
I poured some peroxide on Jet's chest, over the wound, for it was the best thing for infections that I had access to, and watched as the white froth bubbled over, fizzling like crazy. Jet clenched his teeth at that and grunted, grabbing at the covers and twisting them in his fist. "Hush," I told him sternly, placing one knee on the mattress to get closer just in case he tried to move. "You're fine. Don't move."
He cracked open one, clouded eye and squinted at me, asking in a gravely, hoarse voice, "Faye...?"
"None other," I replied, taking the needle from the first aid kit and threading it.
"What...? Where are...my clothes? Did I lose...them to you...gambling again?"
I suppressed dry laughter. "Talk about a memory lapse. For your information, you are still wearing pants, and we have not been gambling. Lie still now. I have to stitch you up."
Ed instinctively reached out to let him grasp her small hand as the needle pierced his flesh. He cried out, unprepared for it, but basically lay still after that. When it was finished, and after I had cleansed it again, he lay trembling and gasping for breath, swallowing back the exclamations of pain I'm sure he wanted to make.
"So, Jet," I said, pulling the blanket up over his bare shoulders, careful not to agitate the wound, "what's happened to you?"
But his eyes were already closing again, and his fitful breathing was quieting. He still grasped Ed's fingers in his large, callused palm, more loosely now though. Before I could ask him again, he had drifted off to sleep.
~~~~~
Hikari88: Thanks so much for everything! lol Keep on reviewing! ~_^
ClassicElfRyoko: I'm glad you thought the flashback was funny. A touch of humor keeps an angsty story from getting too boring, I think. ^_^
Osa: Aww! Puppies! *pets puppies on head* I love animals! Faye could never be a Mary Sue now, could she? lol She's the only drop-dead gorgeous girl in anime who doesn't agitate me because at the same time, she's got a hilarious personality.
AnimeDragon04: AND I LOVE YOU! *laughs like crazy* See what happens when you say you love my story? hehe
Volk Zyta: Faye and Ed do seem to get along because even if Faye is uptight, Ed is laid back. Maybe they will eventually get to be legal mother and daughter. ~_^
Tina: I think Vicious would have to be obsessive with his dental hygiene cuz his skin is so white, his teeth would look yellow unless they were absolutely perfect! lol
Zithromax: Ugh! Anime DVDs are SO overpriced! I had to pay almost forty bucks for the last seven episodes of Fruits Basket! Can you believe it? lol
Bebop-angel1: So, how's the picture coming along? Thanks for the compliment!
Psycho-CJ: Both Faye and Vicious have done bad things, but that doesn't mean they don't deserve to be happy...and together - hehe.
Adieu: I tried to make the chapter a little longer this time, but I'm so busy! I'm SORRY! *cries*
Bloody Love: They're not together yet, but Vicious will start to come in, slowly but surely!
REVIEW!!!
Well, I finally updated! Sorry it took so long! FORGIVE ME! *falls onto knees* I thanked all the reviewers at the end! Please continue to review! And now, the mystery of Jet's death - SOLVED!
~~~~~
Vicious was in the news again, actually making the headline. He had murdered some big, important business man and they had blown up this awful picture of him from when he was in jail and put it on the front page. He looked terrible, grim and half-dead. Obviously, while the last crime had been petty, he was now a serious offender who would be either sentenced to death row or living the rest of his life in prison - if they could catch him.
I doubted they could.
Throwing down the paper in disgust, I growled, "And that - is the man I love."
Ed was fiddling with her laptop again, 'oohing' and 'ahhing' about every five seconds. I tried my best to ignore her.
Things were going well enough, but life was boring. I needed to get out of this horrible rut. Maybe that's why I took up a bounty that I knew I probably couldn't handle, although I insisted I could. I even took Ed with me, but only because she insisted she could help. Hey, it's not like I was her mother. The kid could do as she pleased.
"Ed don't like this..." she said in a lilting, playful voice as we stopped in front of the abandoned warehouse.
Ed and I had tracked the bounty thus far, having learned that this had been her most recent hideout. It was a she this time - a fifty-something woman named Taylor Dunmore, guilty of drug dealing and nearly twenty murders in the last year. Seven of those were bounty hunters, much like myself. She'd been a nurse who had turned to stealing drugs and medication from the hospital and selling them to the patients who came in due to overdose. She'd killed a few people to cover it up, and then done away with a few more just for fun, it seemed.
"Oh, Ed," I sighed dramatically. "Use proper grammar. Stop referring to yourself in third person. And if it starts to get too tough, we get out, ok?"
"Hmm..." Ed still didn't look sure.
I told the girl to wait while I went in to check things out for clues that others might have overlooked. It was probably going to be a dead end, but you have to start somewhere.
The moment I stepped inside, I knew something was wrong.
This place looked very well lived-in, but that was impossible. The last bounty hunter we had talked to had said that he'd been there just the week before and it was completely empty, but worth a look. And what a look it was.
A half-finished carton of fried rice sat on a low table, and there were tousled blankets that had obviously been slept in the night before. There were empty beer cans scattered about the floor, but no one was in sight. Really, it made me edgy. She wasn't supposed to be here! I was unprepared and suddenly very nervous.
I started to back out the door, but squared my shoulders instead. No. I needed money. And perhaps someone had only spent the night here and left early in the morning. Yes, that had to be it. And so, with courage renewed, I stepped forward and began to slowly approach the next room with gun in hand, finding it perfectly empty and layered in dust. The dirt and grime was so thick that it soiled my shoes, and thick clouds rose beneath my feet, filling my lungs until I choked on a cough.
The next room was much the same, providing no clues, and by then there was a niggling of doubt in my stomach, so I decided to trust my instincts and began to take leave. However, just when I was about to enter the first room again, soft footsteps penetrated my hearing and I whirled around, back to the wall, sucking in a deep breath and trying not to panic. Crap, crap, crap! This was NOT good.
"Faye-Faye?"
I peeked around the corner and breathed an angry sigh of relief. Ed was standing hesitantly in the doorway, blinking green eyes at me in fascination. "Ed!" I scolded. "I told you to stay outside!"
"But I wanted to tell you something," she protested, hands on her hips, frowning a little.
I found myself scowling. "What?"
Her face brightened at my offer to listen, like I had just given her some sort of great invitation. "Well," she said, grinning, "when you were going in, I walked around back and guess who I found sneaking out the back door!"
"Vicious?" I asked sarcastically.
"Nooo," she replied, shaking her head enthusiastically. She raised her arm and gestured for me to follow her as she began to step outside again. "Come and see. Come!"
What to do with little girls? I began to reluctantly follow, not sure what I was to find, or even if it was worth the energy to walk out to the car we had rented. I still wanted to look around the first room a little for some signs of where Taylor Dunmore might currently be, but Ed was not to be put off in matters like this, and I could not concentrate with the child following at my heels. She'd probably found nothing of importance - a stray cat or dog or something.
"Look! Look! Look!" Ed sang, dancing out to the car and stopping to peer in the back seat, her happiness rapidly fading. "Oh my," she sighed, pressing her hands to the glass. "He fell asleep!"
"Who?" I demanded, stalking over. "Don't tell me you let a BUM into our car! This is a rental, Ed!"
"He is not a bum," she sniffed, looking at me defiantly.
I moved past the child and shoved her out of the way, not cruelly, but certainly forcefully. With a tired sigh, I bent down and glared through the tinted window, only to gasp and desperately claw at the door handle, ripping it open.
"Jet!" I gasped, gawking at the man curled up in a fetal position on the back seat, lying on his side with his feet towards my end of the car, head in the opposite direction. He was dirty and his clothes, the same as the ones I had last seen him in, were tattered. What was the worst, though, was that his one arm curled around his body protectively while the other, the robotic one, was flat out missing.
Since he didn't respond except to curl around himself a little more, I assumed he had passed out or was close to doing so. But he was supposed to be dead, wasn't he?! What was he doing hiding out in Taylor Dunmore's recently ransacked lair, and why was all this happening to me?!
"ED!" I screeched. "Get in the car! We need to go!"
"Kay," she replied easily, scrambling into the passenger side and hefting Ein into her lap. The brown and white Corgi squirmed and barked excitedly.
I noticed than with a little bit of pity and more anger that Jet was bleeding from a hidden wound and staining the rental car until it was most likely beyond repair. "Oh, this is great!" I seethed, hopping into the driver's seat and yanking on my seat belt to jerk down so I could buckle it. With the way I was about to be driving, I was certainly going to need it.
~~~~~
Jet couldn't explain to me what was going on. I doubted he would be able to even if he was awake enough to talk. But, for the moment, he was unconscious on the apartment bed, limbs splayed in all directions. It'd been quite a task lugging the heavy man up the stairs with only Ed's help, and avoiding being seen was even harder, but with that accomplished, I realized that all might be a piece of cake compared to repairing his badly damaged body.
"Ed," I instructed my redheaded helper, "get some warm water and the towels from the bathroom. Bring the bandages and the first-aid kit from the closet and be quick about it!"
"Yes, Faye-Faye!" she said, and scampered off obediently, only to return a mere minute later. It seemed as if the child moved with lightning speed. "Here. What now?"
"Just...stay still. I might need something else." I was grimacing and working on peeling off Jet's blood-soaked shirt, nearly gagging when I saw the massive wound across his chest. It was pretty deep towards the left end, but got more shallow the further towards his heart it traveled, which was good, I supposed. Also, it seemed as if it hadn't happened too recently, for it was already caked with dried scarlet fluid and attempting to scab over, though from the looks of the oozing, yellow-white pus it was also very infected. "Oh, this is disgusting!" I cried, looking to the girl beside me to see how she was handling it.
Ed stared quizzically at Jet, murmuring in confusion, "Where'd his arm go...?"
I briefly looked upon his shoulder and the nub of flesh where the arm should've been connected. "He must've lost it or sold it or something," I grumbled, realizing how preposterous it would be for Jet to sell a limb after the words had left my mouth. "Never mind. It's not important. He can get a new one."
"Oh."
I dipped a white cloth in the basin of warm water and gently began to wash his bare torso of the dried blood. He'd lost some weight. Don't get me wrong - he was still a massive man, but it was obvious he hadn't been eating too well.
Ed watched with wide, green eyes as the basin of water clouded with wisps of red liquid.
I moved on up towards the wound, watching Jet's face for signs of discomfort. He wrinkled his large, angled nose a few times, his thin lips twitching, but didn't move otherwise. Carefully, I began to wipe at the tender, purpling skin around the slash, seeing the lines around his eyes crinkle as he squeezed them shut tighter.
"Ed," I murmured, "get a cold cloth and put it over Jet's forehead. I think he has a fever."
She listened, compliant and silent for once in her life.
I poured some peroxide on Jet's chest, over the wound, for it was the best thing for infections that I had access to, and watched as the white froth bubbled over, fizzling like crazy. Jet clenched his teeth at that and grunted, grabbing at the covers and twisting them in his fist. "Hush," I told him sternly, placing one knee on the mattress to get closer just in case he tried to move. "You're fine. Don't move."
He cracked open one, clouded eye and squinted at me, asking in a gravely, hoarse voice, "Faye...?"
"None other," I replied, taking the needle from the first aid kit and threading it.
"What...? Where are...my clothes? Did I lose...them to you...gambling again?"
I suppressed dry laughter. "Talk about a memory lapse. For your information, you are still wearing pants, and we have not been gambling. Lie still now. I have to stitch you up."
Ed instinctively reached out to let him grasp her small hand as the needle pierced his flesh. He cried out, unprepared for it, but basically lay still after that. When it was finished, and after I had cleansed it again, he lay trembling and gasping for breath, swallowing back the exclamations of pain I'm sure he wanted to make.
"So, Jet," I said, pulling the blanket up over his bare shoulders, careful not to agitate the wound, "what's happened to you?"
But his eyes were already closing again, and his fitful breathing was quieting. He still grasped Ed's fingers in his large, callused palm, more loosely now though. Before I could ask him again, he had drifted off to sleep.
~~~~~
Hikari88: Thanks so much for everything! lol Keep on reviewing! ~_^
ClassicElfRyoko: I'm glad you thought the flashback was funny. A touch of humor keeps an angsty story from getting too boring, I think. ^_^
Osa: Aww! Puppies! *pets puppies on head* I love animals! Faye could never be a Mary Sue now, could she? lol She's the only drop-dead gorgeous girl in anime who doesn't agitate me because at the same time, she's got a hilarious personality.
AnimeDragon04: AND I LOVE YOU! *laughs like crazy* See what happens when you say you love my story? hehe
Volk Zyta: Faye and Ed do seem to get along because even if Faye is uptight, Ed is laid back. Maybe they will eventually get to be legal mother and daughter. ~_^
Tina: I think Vicious would have to be obsessive with his dental hygiene cuz his skin is so white, his teeth would look yellow unless they were absolutely perfect! lol
Zithromax: Ugh! Anime DVDs are SO overpriced! I had to pay almost forty bucks for the last seven episodes of Fruits Basket! Can you believe it? lol
Bebop-angel1: So, how's the picture coming along? Thanks for the compliment!
Psycho-CJ: Both Faye and Vicious have done bad things, but that doesn't mean they don't deserve to be happy...and together - hehe.
Adieu: I tried to make the chapter a little longer this time, but I'm so busy! I'm SORRY! *cries*
Bloody Love: They're not together yet, but Vicious will start to come in, slowly but surely!
REVIEW!!!