III.

Ghost Train

She buys a ticket 'cause it's cold where she comes from

She climbs aboard because she's scared of getting older in the snow.

Love is a ghost train rumbling through the darkness

Hold onto me darling I've got nowhere else to go

"Maybe this is the one. The one I don't come back from. The end." His voice was heavy. Serious, but gentle. And the sound of his words was enough to bring her to tears. But she only stared at her cigarette and bit her lip as the realization settled in.

"Just messing with your head!" He laughed when he saw the hurt reflected in her emerald eyes. But it wasn't enough. They both knew the inevitable and it shook her in a way she couldn't imagine. "But would you come for me if it were true?"

"Lunkhead."

Images of the man wove in and out of her mind as she drifted in and out of consciousness. As she opened her eyes, her vision was blurred and yet she sensed warmth. The smokey smell of a fire, of food, wafting in. As she became more and more aware of her surroundings, she could sense softness beneath her. Her eyes darted around at the hundreds of twentieth century items crawling up thin walls.

A soft groaning noise escaped her lips as she attempted to sit up. She was weak.

"Where...where am I?" She said softly, wondering if anyone inhabited the silence. "Am I alive?"

Nobody answered for a long time, until a low voice found it's way to Fayes ears. The voice reminded her of deep forests, of musty houses, of things that had long since ceased to be. The voice awakened something in her that she could not identify.

"You are weak, Wandering Rose."

It was the best food she had ever tasted, and this was from a woman who got around.

"Mhmhmg." Faye mumbled, her mouth full. "Vis is really goo!"

Laughing Bull only smiled and nodded, as the small child beside him looked at the woman strangely. The child had never seen anything like her fefore, and edged closer to the old man. In her smidged makeup and tousled hair, Faye had been clothed in old shorts and a 2-th century tee shirt, bandages soaked in medicinal herbs crept up her arms and legs, suffocateing her as they healed three of her broken ribs. Over this, a large, heavy, bearskin had been draped across her bruised shoulder. And she ate like a wild animal.

Faye sat the bowl down when she was finished, burping crudely. The old man didn't eem to mind her terrible ettiquette, instead only offered her more.

"I don't even know your name!"

"You may call me Laughing Bull."

Laughing Bull puzzled her. Why would this man, a complete stranger, give a rats ass about her? It's not like she had done anything for...suddenly, a look of horror crossed her face. Had he...? Had she...?

"You are looking for something." Laughing Bull stated, as if to read her mind, "I have seen it. And so Wantantanka, the Great Spirit, has sent you to me."

Faye raised an eyebrow. This guy must be nuts.

"You are looking for him."

"How did you-?" She let the bear skin slip off her shoulders as she jumped up. "Who the hell are you!"

"I have seen him. The star for which you seek." He spoke in slow, menial, terms. "The star is dangling from a thin string. The star has yet to fall. You must hurry."

"What are you talking about?" She cried, "What IS this!"

"Each organism, each living being has a star." He said slowly, "When a new life begins, a new star is born. The guardian star, the star that holds a spirit. And when that spirit dies, the star falls and disappears."

"You must hurry, Wandering Rose. His star has yet to disappear."

"Why are you calling me that?" Her voice level was rising. The man frightened her, his cryptic language, his strange ways...

"Take your ship. It has been fully repaired." He told her, ignoring her inquiry. "Hurry, before it is too late. Save the star. May the Great Spirit guide you."

...Would you come for me if it were true?

As the redtail streaked across the vermillion Martian landscape, Laughing Bull's words rang in her head.

The star is dangling from a thin string... the star that holds a spirit... his star has yet to disappear

What the hell does that mean?

But she knew exactly what it meant.

Spike was alive and he was out there.

Faye was never the type to beleive in things like that, or maybe she denied the fact that she did. She rarely liked anything that didn't have a logical explanation behind it, and she never liked the unknown at all. Perhaps it was because she had a hard time taking advantage of it, or maybe it played into some sort of God thing. Faye obviously believed in some sort of supreme being because she was afraid of, despite the fact that she would never admit it. She went to a Catholic Girls School, and although she had little or no memory of it, one of the beliefs they had so graciously shoved into her brain had stuck-

One of these days, you're gonna be knockin' on heavens door, and you had damn well better be on your knees.

Faye tried to ignore this. She tried to account for all the times she had been on her knees.

Actually...

Well, those times didn't count. Still the concept of forgiveness was foreign to her. Sure, she tried to beg Spike or Jet for forgiveness as a last resort all the time. But between her desperate pleas and empty promises lay the hope of food, money, and/or cigarettes.

She wondered if God played cards.

"That'll be 70 woolongs, Ma'am." He looked at her dully. She raised her eyebrow. He was a zit faced dull looking skinny teenager, and Faye decided that she hated him.

"Uh... lemme see if I've got that..." Faye smiled a winning smile and looked the pasty boy in the eye. "It doesn't seem like I do."

"Sorry, lady," He said, eyes narrowed, "No cash, no gas."

"Oh, come on." She cooed, "Couldn't you let me off this one time..." She bent over the counter, pushing heavy cleavage into his face. Faye glanced at his nametag. "Couldn't you please, uh... Marty?"

Ten minutes later, Faye lay virtually exposed on top of the counter. The boy now seemed to be very interested.

"Uh, um..." He was beet red, and rather shocked, but seemed to be enjoying the whole thing very much. "I'm not sure my, uh... manager..." He loosened his collar, sweat dripping off his greasy forehead, eyes taking in her incredibly large breasts shoved in his face. "Maybe we could meet up sometime later, hm?"

"Forget it, kid." Faye said flatly, buttoning her top. She shoved her gun into his face. "Just give me the fucking gas."

The Redtail lay parked in some kind of car lot in an unidentified city somewhere on Mars. She kicked her ship and cursed loudly.

"Dammit, Faye!" She rubbed her temples. "What the HELL are you doing!"

There she was. Scantily clad, with only her ship, her wit, and the hope of rescuing a lunk headed cowboy from his inevitable doom. Smart. Real smart. Where was she gonna look? Search every city on Mars? Hell, was he even ON Mars? Where was Julia? Who was she looking for, now, anyway?

And now she was lost.

"HE COULD BE ANYWHERE IN THE ENTIRE FUCKING UNIVERSE."

Faye let out a high pitched scream.

Blue grey buildings against a grey sky, cold winds that would chill you to the bone. Sad. Destroyed. Forgotten. Warehouses and junkyards and trashy bars and tranny-whores and sax players. To some it was disgusting, a temporary hiding place. But to others it was devastatingly beautiful. A fallen city struck by weather and poverty and heartbreak.

Callisto.

Maybe she went because she knew she could make some quick cash. Maybe she went because she knew nobody would ever find her. Or maybe she went because it was the first place in the world where someone actually took the time to understand her when she didn't even understand herself.

She sat on the cold concrete steps of an abandoned building. She had no money for a drink, or even a pack of cigarettes. She was freezing. She was 23 years olf and freezing. She was 23 years old and falling back on all the places she went wrong.

Faye somehow believed her past would complete her. After all, isn't that what everyone was looking for? Completion? She recalled standing in the shower of the Bebop, water pounding on her naked back, memories flooding her faster than she could even breath. And they were so distant and so familiar and so terrifying.

But they didn't bring her anywhere.

She drew a rectangle in the shape of a coffin in the dust and lay down and stared at the blood red sky. She imagined herself as a little girl, innocent. A little firl who didn't drow her sorrows in cheap beer, or smoke clove cigarettes until her mouth tasted like ash, a little girl who didn't need to cheat or lie or steal or seduce greasy Quick-Stop clerks because she couldn't afford 70 woolongs worth of gas. She imagined herself as a little girl, beautiful, smiling, unbroken.

She imagined the soft pat of her saddle shoes against pavement, a soft breeze blowing and the trees laughing alongside her. She pushed the iron gates open, remembered that the left one squeaked but she always pushed it the hardest anyway, and she burst through the majestic doors into the foyer and acould smell potatoes baking in the oven and the aroma of her fathers pipe. A dark haired woman serenaded down the staircase to engulf her daughter in folds of Elizabeth Taylor perfume and a terry bathrobe and would you please tuck your shirt in, darling, because it looks so messy. This was hers.

This all belonged to a little girl with a big smile and a million little reminders that she was loved.

Faye began to sob, choking, chest heaving. What was she looking for? Julia? What would Julia bring her? Only memories of Spike, and the realization of something she could never, ever, have. And then the old Indian. His star bullshit about Spike being alive. So now what?

She was all worn out with no place to go.

The key was dirty. Worn and scratched and bent slightly. She wondered if it still worked, or if the locks had been changed or if that was even still his home.

Home. It was a funny word.

But she slid the key into the lock, turned it, and heard a soft click. Julia stood there, in the blue apartment building, sixth floor. She didn't open the door. She just stood there.

Then she went inside.

His apartment was warm, although the heating had long since been shut off. But there was something about the place- the dusty piano, the wood paneled walls, the photographs pinned to the wall, all of it. Something that radiated comfort and warmth and ... love.

Oh, Gren…

She could see him so clearly now, sitting across from her on his sofa, just... listening to her. She had never known what it was like before she met him, to be listened to like that. His eyes, bearing into her, yet not in any way intimidating, a slight smile across his face that seemed to say that he knew what she meant, that everything would be fine.

"Tell me." Gren had asked her, as he poured steaming tea into a crystal glass. She was suprised at him, when he didn't prompt her to take off her clothes as soon as they waltzed in the door. But he wasn't like that.

"What is there to tell?" She replied, reaching for the glass.

"Your eyes," he said, "They tell me you have a story."

"There's nothing to tell. I'm just one of those girls..."

"Everyone has a story"

She stared at him. His features were soft, his face was beautiful. Androgynous. And in his eyes? It was painful to look at them.

"There was a gun." She began, "There was a man..."

Julia slowly stepped into the room. Two glasses still sat on the table, cold, one half full. She wondered, who was with him on the last night of his life? His saxophone case lay lifeless by the chair. She knelt, and opened it.

"Play me that song, Mr. Saxophone. Play me that song and I'll let you see me smile."

She came in, to hear that song, almost every night, barely touching the drink she ordered. And she didn't take her eyes off of him, she loved to watch him play. He put so much passion into his music, as if it weren't just sound wafting out from the golden instrument, but his soul, released through that crying saxophone... as if it were the only thing he had left.

Julia softly shut the case. Standing up, she walked over to where the pictures were. An entire wall, covered in photographs. As if he believed he could find closure from the photographs on the wall. As if he believed he could find himself.

A red light on the answering machine flicked. She pushed the button, curious.

"Gren... you're not there? I'm out with 'horoutou' along with the 'mangan' and 'ura dora.' It's 32,000. I'll be waiting."

Vicious' voice. Somehow, Julia was not suprised.

i So he finally foun him. So he finally found an answer. /i

And she remembered... how long he had waited.

"We risked our lives on Titan. Side by side, we fought. We suffered. We died. And the friends you make there, they're the ones you remember forever. The ones that you can truly trust. I trusted him so much he was like a guardian. I loved that feeling. But with that comes betrayal. And the worst thing in the world is the sting of betrayal."

"They say betrayal is the highest form of love."

"Oh?"

"To betray the one you love is to inflict upon yourself the most impossible of deep pains, and to willingly submit yourself to that is an action which can only be caused by love."

"That's very wise, Julia." He said softly, considering what she had just said. "But if you love someone, why would you betray them?"

"If it wasn't love, could there be betrayal?"

Julia had once read somewhere that Callisto was a beautiful girl who hoped to always remain innocent. Myth had it that Callisto allowed the god Jupiter to seduce her, and when his wife discovered this she bacme angry. So Jupiter turned Callisto into a bear.

Julia somehow felt connected to this story, to this planet. The story of a young woman who was turned into a beast by the will of a man.

So she kept coming back. To the bar with the beautiful music. To the cheap apartment with photographs pinned to the wall. To the feeling of being completely and utterly alone in a world of strangers and ice, and then discovering something like love.

She stayed with Gren and they kept each other company. They never consummated their love, or even recognized it, because they didn't need to. They kept each others secrets in locked boxes, and the only thing they could ever do for one another was understand. They inderstood each other, and that was so much more than anyone else had ever done for them.

She could feel her spine begin to numb as she leant against the icy lamp post. It was so cold it burned her. The street corner looked deserted, forgotten, even as she ran a glass nail up her bare leg and pushed out her breasts in the hopes of enticing someone, anyone, before her walls fell away. She tried to look sultry and sexy, but she only looked cheap and cold and tears began to gather in the corners of mascara coated eyes. She wanted to go home.

Suddenly, a dark car pulled up beside her. Faye cirled her crimson lips upward and waltzed over to the tinted window. She let porcelain fingers trace the outline of her thin figure as the window began to roll down.

"Hey there." Faye cooed, unable to see the figure inside, "Looking for some company tonight?"

All of a sudden, the flourescent light hit the driver of the vehicle, and Faye could see that it wasn't a desperate sex starved maniac at all. She let a small gasp escape her lips.

"As a matter of fact I was, Miss Valentine." Julia said, a crooked smile dancing across her lips.

She lit a cigarette. In all her times of confusion and distress, there was really nothing like a cigarette. She would have preferred an answer to all of this, but all Julia did was offer her a smoke and that was just fine too.

"We have a habit of running into each other." Julia told her, blowing smoke out of the window.

"Thanks for picking me up," Faye replied.

"You looked pretty desperate out there."

"You were his comrade." Julia said, her tone accusatory and sad.

Faye only sighed. She lit another cigarette and sighed. Finally, she only said, "Yes."

"What was he like, in the last moments of his life? What was Spike like?"

They were in Grens apartment, Faye draped across the couch, Julia sitting upright across from the glass table, with a dignified grace one would expect from a much older woman. Or a Queen.

Faye sighed again, her head resting ponderously on her shoulders. Julia didn't press her to answer, only watched the woman and waited for her to speak when she was ready. And Faye was trying not to cry. She hated herself for crying for Spike. He wasn't hers. He would never b be /b hers. And there she was, spilling her guts to the woman who loved him. A woman she envied for more reasons than one.

"Devastating." She finally said, her voice soft and on the brink of tears. "Like a man who was ready to die."

Julia closed her eyes. She remembered him, all of him. The way he had to keep flicking his lighter because he could never remember to refill it. The way he cursed at his ship or car or whatever the hell was breaking down on him at the worst possible moments. The way he laughed when somebody did something stupid, or the way he cracked a sarcastic comment at something that required utter seriousness. The way he crudely devoured whatever food was place out in front of him. And the way he looked as he stood in the alley, smokeing, dropping cigarettes like bombs and holding those roses as it rained. Roses for her. And it broke her heart over and over again.

"I remember a few weeks before it all began." Faye continued, after a long pause, "We were always screwing around with each other. This time it was a pack of cigarettes. I remember yelling at him, screaming that they were mine and that I had bought them last week and he mistook them for his. And he called me a liar and told me to give back the damn pack before he kicked my sorry ass off the ship for good. And we yelled at each other back and forth until I finally dropped the cigarettes down the toilet and that was the end of that."

Julia smiled. A funny, lilting smile. But Faye only sighed, her own cigarette buring and wasting.

"I knew they were his all along."

"Did you love him?" Julia asked. It was a stupid, random, question. She didn't know why she asked it, and she felt sorry that she did. She wondered how Faye would react to it.

"Yes." Faye said, suprising even herself. She never thought of herself loving Spike. He was the guy who always left the toilet seat up and never lent her money and complained of her general existance. But as she thought about it, she realized that Spike was one of the only people she actually came to trust. There was only one other person she could recall being able to trust, and she could also recall him betraying her. But Spike... "I trusted him enough not to let someone shoot me in the back... but not enough to let him see the feelings in my eyes."

Julia chuckled at this. "He was hard not to trust. He was always so sure of everything he did." Smiling, she tilted her head back. "Naturally, I trusted him with my life. Now... trusting him with his life, well, that's another story."

Faye laughed. A tiny little laugh, but a laugh nonetheless.

"He was a brilliant idiot."

It was easy, talking to Julia. She was never judgemental, and even if she were, Faye wouldn't have minded. She admired the woman, in all her stoic grace, perhaps because she was so very, very, wise. She didn't seem like the type to ever be lost or afraid. She didn't seem like she needed anything, whether it be sex or money or men or even comrades to make her feel worth something. Maybe she knew she was worth everything, or maybe she accepted the fact that she wasn't worth anything. Or maybe that was all bullshit, and she was simply Julia.

"So why did you do it?" Faye asked her, staring off into space. Julia had told her the entire sad story. And all hard feelings Faye still harbored for Spike seemed to melt away. All the time he had insulted her and called her a wench and a liar, or stolen i her /i cigarettes seemed inconsequential compared to what he had been put through. "Why didn't you go with him when he asked you to? Didn't you love him?"

"His eyes were different colors." Julia said gently, her voice heavy and her words seem to drip with pain, "He always said that one eye saw the past, and the other saw the present. But I know when he looked at me he saw the future, for the first time. He saw something other than the drugs or the money or the killing. He saw me as something more than the beast I had become. But that was all I was and that was all I knew." She paused to run her slender fingers through her hair. She always moved with a kind of sadness, like an old film. "I was afraid. Of leaving, of what would become of us. I knew we couldn't run. I knew eventually the Syndicate would track us down, hunt us, kill us both. So when he asked me to meet him at the cemetary, I didn't go. I left. I'd like to say didn't go because I wanted to protect him from Vicious. That may have been true, because I never would have forgiven myself if I he had killed him. But I left because I was afraid."

The two women looked at each other.

"It didn't occur to me that by betraying him I would be killing him more painfully than Vicious ever could"

"If you love them, set them free." Faye said, drawing another cigarette out of the pack. "Wonder what asshole came up with that..."

"You know, there are a lot of things I could say to make the whole situation sound better than it really is. To sugarcoat it, to say that I left him for his own good. For the syndicate's good. Or I could do the exact opposite, exaggerate it all and turn it into some monster that's entirely worse. I don't know which one of the two I prefer, or if I'd rather leave it as it is and deal with it that way. I was never encouraged, even as a child to make up stories. But the world is bleak without storybooks and takes and jokes and things to fill the world with words. Any words. Happy words, sad words, angry words. The words you can't say out loud, even though they're right there, waiting to come out. So I guess I'm missing something on the inside, and maybe I thought he'd be the one to give it back to me. But I won't make up stories about us, that's one promise I can keep." Julia sighed as she said this. The woman was a million kinds of tired, a million kinds of broken. And Faye looked at her with pity. Faye was never the type to pity anyone, but her heart filled with sorrow for Julia.

"My world revolved around him, Faye." Julia continued, her voice so very soft, "And it was dangerous for me. When I joined the Syndicate, I didn't really think about what I was doing, or what would become of me. Nobody did. And I became so entangled in a web of lies and blood, that when love came creeping along it broke me. I was so afraid. And so I ran."

"And now he's gone." Faye said, her tone accusatory. "Just like that!"

"But I loved him." Julia said tragically, "And when I close my eyes I can still see him, images of him, the happier Spike. The way he sat on the front steps of my apartment building, head against sky, fingertips so very near to the dome of heaven. And I can't believe that the man I see there is the one that floods my haunted dreams, chasing me down like a hunter who just won't tire until he has his prize."

"And so that's your story, Julia." Faye said, after a long time. "It's tragic. Heartbreaking. Enough to bring someone to their knees." She stared at the floor. "But at least you have a past! At least you have something to shape you!"

Then Faye burst into tears. Hot, angry tears of jealousy and regret and fatigue and failure rolled down her face and burned paths into her cheeks. Julia didn't know what to do. She had a feeling that putting her arm around the woman in a maternal fashion, or patting her shoulder in psuedo comfort would be a showy, empty thing to do, so she only waited until Faye had cried herself out and was ready to speak.

"I thought that my past would make me whole again." Faye sniffled, "I thought I'd have somewhere to belong. But nothing came out of it. I'm all alone again."

"We all have our ghost trains." Julia said slowly. " Even you."

"I don't understand."

"Ghost trains. Your life is like a train full of ghosts, and they're strung out behind you. Trains of memories and moments that follow us wherever we go. Pieces of people and things latch on, and Faye, they never let go." She said, "And you may think you have no ghosts, but you do. And I do. And everyone does. Spike is a part of my ghost train, as he is of yours."

Faye only stared at the hard wood floors, dark smudges gathering around her eyes from mascara and eyeliner, black.

"Love is a ghost train, Faye." She continued, "Love is getting on the train together with all your respective ghosts. And the longer you're in it, the more you show each other all of these ghosts. And it's hard for people to do, but you must accepts Spike's ghosts because that's what finally killed him."

"He could have had a future."

"No." Julia said painfully, "He died long before he left you. And when he finally fell, he went with honor and that's all that we could ever ask for."

"Honor again." Faye spat, her tone loud, angry. She couldn't understand it. "We're all better off without it."

"That may be." Julia said, "But it's something we all hope for, despite where it leads us."

"I don't need it."

"Spike did." Julia told Faye as much as she was telling herself. "I left him rotting in shame. And he couldn't live with that."

"He was a ronin."