Try not to reach out,
But when I tried to speak out,
Felt like no one could hear me.
Wanted to belong here,
But something felt so wrong here.
So I'd pray,
I could break away.
Kelly Clarkson - "Break Away"
Chapter One Lessons From the Past
She ran her hands along the table in the darkness until they met with the cold metal of her gun. From the moment she felt it, a lump formed in her throat. Memories struck her like lightning and tears stung her eyes like acid as she fought desperately to blink them back. Her gun was an old friend, one she hadn't seen in awhile. She knew the tears weren't about the gun.
She hadn't used it since that night, the night she had fired desperately in the air . . . anything to make him stop and turn around. He was a ghost, a shadow constantly looming over her. She carried his weight on her shoulders, plagued by the life he left unlived. She knew how pathetic this was, and time and time again, she tried to tell herself to let go of the past. The past didn't matter. She'd spoken those words herself, but now, how could she believe them? How could she believe them when they were the words of a man who was now only the past?
One year. He'd been gone for a whole year, but it still didn't feel like the past. Nothing happened. Without him, there were no adventures. She was left on the Bebop every day to sit there and think about him, to remember him and everything he had done. Everything within the walls of the ship held something of him. The yellow couch, the cigarettes, and the awful cooking. It all screamed out everything he was, and his room . . . no one would enter. Jet had said many times that he would clean it out for her, because it was much bigger than the room Faye occupied, but he'd never stepped a foot in there. Faye wondered why. She wondered, maybe, if it was in hope that he would come back someday, but Jet wasn't the time of person who would hold onto something like that.
Everything seemed unaffected by Spike's death. Everything but her. She'd cried many times since the day he'd left. She'd damned Julia and she'd damned the world, and she'd even prayed that he'd come back someday. It didn't do any good. It was a year, and he'd never come back. She kept her little, undying hope that he would someday return buried deep within her heart where no one would ever find it. She hid it well, because she knew, the moment Jet found out, he would crush it.
This night, however, was different. That afternoon, she'd caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. She was pale and thin, and dark circles had formed under her eyes. She knew what she looked like. She looked like a corpse. That had opened her eyes, because she remembered, just then, what had killed Spike. Stubbornly, Spike had refused to let go of the past. Ties to the past had led him to his fate like a leash, and Julia was the one holding them. That night, she was cutting her strings, those invisible strings that bound her to him. For a long time, she'd worn his weight on her shoulders, as though she had been carrying his corpse. This night, she would drop this weight and leave it behind.
Having successfully blinked back the tears, she placed her gun and her yellow outfit in the wine-colored box that had once held nothing but cigarettes and magazines. She placed other little things in there, things that no one knew she had. In the darkness, she poured her life into that box. Her gold bracelet hit the floor with a little clatter, and her hands roamed in search of it. She couldn't turn the light on to find it. It would wake Jet up, and it was too late to turn back. She'd had her mind on this all week. It was too late to turn back, and it was too late to start thinking about Jet.
She placed the lid on the box and slid it underneath the yellow couch. Standing up, her eye caught a shadowy shape in the darkness. No, there was nothing there, even though she half-expected to find Spike, busted up and bandaged. She told herself that she was being ridiculous, that he would never lie there again. They'd never fight again. He'd never bum another cigarette. He'd never pull another stupid stunt.
She'd never see him again. It stuck her like a bullet in her heart, and the tears flew freely. She hated how he was so stubborn and cocky. Danger. It'd always been his most handsome trait back then, but now she damned it. She wished the past had stayed the past, but, hypocritical as it was, she wished the present would just melt away. She could never go to a bar without hearing the tales. They all ended with his triumphant ending, how he'd gone out with a bang.
She wished they were only stories. She wished Julia had only been a dream. She wished none of it were real. Somehow, it didn't seem fair. What had she done to deserve this pain? Why had he made her feel this way? Why did she have to be so stupid? Jet had explained to her the complexity of it all. He told her that Julia was Spike's other half, that without her or hope of finding her, Spike was dead. It was common sense that he didn't belong there without her, but Faye had never been a rational thinker. Come to think of it . . . neither had Spike.
For a long time, she'd been certain that Spike didn't give a damn about anyone other than himself. Now, she wished with all her heart that this assumption had been true. Her heart throbbed in her chest as she muffled her quiet sobs, burying her face into the cushions of the sofa.
But, after a good cry, she did what she had intended to do, because Faye Valentine was stubborn too. She stood up slowly, taking one last glance at the ship, but it was useless. The ship had been painted black with darkness, and without Spike, it didn't feel like home anyway. "Goodbye ... " She spoke gently to the darkened halls of the Bebop, and the tears made it impossible to understand. "Goodbye Jet...Goodbye Ed...Goodbye Ein..." She fought to swallow the lump in her throat and wiped away her tears with the back of her hand. This was it. "Goodbye . . . Spike . . . "
This time, she wasn't coming back to the Bebop, and, because she hadn't stolen anything, she knew that no one would look for her. She'd lost yet another life. Now, with a heavy heart, she was starting all over again.
Her ship took off and vanished into the blackness. To Faye, life on the Bebop was now only a memory.
