Honest-to-God-Disclaimer I don't. A/N In following the story the observant may find that all session titles are jazz compositions – parallels between the song and chapter content are loosely existent if at all.
Summary The Bebop crew vows to apprehend one last bounty in memory of their fallen comrade; but is there any man worthy of the honor?
Fleurette AfricaineSession 1
In a Sentimental MoodThe beauty and serenity of the Martian sunset did not cease to enthrall her. Like the pages of a child's flipbook, Faye's sketched memories turned page after page behind her eyes, all of them a whirl and a blur of color and harsh emotion. She remembered the rising and setting of the sun on her home planet vividly. The dangerous Martian splash of blood across a yellow, dirtied horizon was more beautiful in its juxtaposition with the tar-black bay than the soft, pastel sunsets over the denim blue ponds of Singapore. Had she always thought this? She watched her arms turn white and pinprick goose-bumps bubble
This new world was not like the one she left; it was not the childhood in which all good things stretched to eternity like the elongated clouds somewhere between the horizon and just beyond it. What better indication of the end of the next chapter of her life as the death of Spike Spiegel? In some ways she was more the child than Ed, more unwilling to embrace the closure of one adventure and welcome the next.
The sea breeze was cool, and every so often a harsh, hollow gust would bite at Faye's fingertips. They shook as she lit her cigarette, the artificial flame of the lighter sheltered by the palm of one manicured hand. They were vibrant apple and immaculate. God bless her gloves; she'd miss the security she felt when she wore them. Four days ago, when Jet and her had flown halfway to the Syndicate building – and thinking better of themselves had turned back via some great, silent agreement – Faye had lost them. They were refueling their respective crafts at a way station in the barren outskirts of the Martian city when she saw a man in a suit, no doubt a syndicate thug, pull aside a frail looking old man and push him against the wall. He wanted money. Or drugs. Something. Faye had stepped close to him and punched him once in the face, and then with a surge of subconscious violence shot him in the temple.
The sound of hard metal boots on cold steel was muffled by the blunt openness of the harbor, but she heard him come up behind her. He had a rag in one hand and began to absently shine the railing of the deck. Two circles, one horizontal line, one vertical, a cross inside a sphere, and repeat, first the far left rung, and then the next to the right, and the next.
"Jet," she said through a cigarette, her face outwardly impassive but minutely alight with anger, mischief, and sexuality, the parts of Faye that shadowed her in whatever it was that she was doing or saying. "It's been good."
"What?" Gruff, reedy baritone, like an old man who spoke through the mouth of a someone much younger in body, and though balding and fatherly, Jet was young, perhaps not young enough to start over but young enough to move on.
"I had a good time, I said." Smoke spilt like lace out of the burning cylinder at her mouth, roll after roll of the delicate milky stuff, grayed by exposure to smog and contaminates.
"At my expense."
Faye coughed. "Trust an old, grumpy man to be unsympathetic."
"Shrew woman." His mouth was set in a line as he cleaned, but the ghostly edges of a smile cowered in the dips and crevices that were what she might have called in an older man wrinkles. Jet possessed only scars of experience.
"I'm leaving."
Jet said nothing for a long time. He stole a glance at the Martian sky and looked down again, quickly, afraid that if he looked for too long the memory would implant itself where the image of Spike was already fading; the lines and contours of the younger man's face dulled and tumbled into each other even now. Faye studied the hot embers at the end of her cigarette.
"When?" Jet said presently.
"Later tonight." Faye had left a hundred times and had returned twice as many, noticeably more irritable and with considerably less money. But there was a certain finality to this new departure, a finality that steamed in the cold air with a fiery sense of closure.
The dull hills of waves pushed weakly against the hull of the old ship, surging forwards and then ricocheting backwards, like a rubber bullet striking steel.
Take care of yourself, cowgirl.
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