The Greatest Gatsby

by red-tenko

A different style of Bebop fic, and a different kind of SxF. A year after RFB Faye finds a job, but her boss is obsessed with finding out who killed the Red Dragons and Faye is dragged right back to her past

8. Handle your Scandle

Here it is, FINALLY! Chapter 8, note the longness of this chapter. Yes, it's quite large, but it did it all for you! The readers, you attention whores you—wait, I think I'm the attention whore here. Hrm.

Anywho, the reason this chapter is so damn long is because it's got a little---nay—a LOT bit of everything! I have spaceship battles, and Jet angst and Spike angst and Faye angst and FayeSpike angst and problems with artificial gravity! Who could ask for more? If you ask, I'll shoot, I swear.

Enjoy!

8: Handle your Scandle

"You can't be serious."

"What?" Spike blinked.

I stalked over to the monocraft, noticing that each blemish looked worse close up, and I couldn't help but cringe at all the new scratches now visible. Even if Spike could get this...this object to start its engine, the marks looked like a bad omen for his driving skills. Not to mention one other problem: "Can two people even fit in that thing?"

Spike, now perched on the wing of his beast, looked down at me, then to the cockpit and back to me again. "She's called the Swordfish II," he corrected me, "and she's actually an old asteroid racer. She wasn't built for more than one person, but I've carried bigger bounties than you."

"Carried them how?" I narrowed my eyes in suspicion as I scanned the craft for any sign of excess space.

Spike scratched the back of his curly green head. "In the cargo hold, actually—or the really big ones got tied to the roof."

All I could do was sigh. "Cargo please."

The Swordfish II's 'hold' was actually a small gap between the pilot's chair and the thin bulkhead separating it from the back thrusters. It's a place to store spare fuel, flight suits, and other emergency equipment that a racer would drop in two seconds just to loose weight. Spike pushed the seat forward as far is it would go. It was still a snug fit, but finally the Chinese-Korean-Pilipino-Spanish genes that had barely allowed me to grow five feet were coming in handy.

He closed the hatch not a moment too soon, the sound of the vacuum seal mixing with the peppered ker-CHUNK's from the first round of bullets. "Son of a—" the roar from the powering engines cut off Spike's curse, as well as my scream when I realized there was nothing to hold on to. The Swordfish II pushed off with a force that shoved me against the bulkhead. The hold vibrated roughly like a two-woolong bed in a cheap motel. I was really too close to the engine for comfort; it felt as though I was locked in a metal safe, playing a game of Red Rover with gravity. Then the moment ended, and it only took a second for the pressure to release and my ears to pop. We were airborne.

"Why is it so rough?" I asked. The ship straightened out after finding a current, and I tentatively loosened my grip on the back of the pilot's chair.

"Rough?" Spike echoed, nearly sounding innocent. "Oh you'll get used to it."

"But I don't have a seatbelt!"

"Kid, that should be the least of your worries." Spike's words managed to help me loose even more assurance as he suddenly jolted us starboard. The sheen of bullets he'd mostly outmaneuvered still caught the edge of the wing, and we tipped a little. "Shit," hissed my captain. "That's why getting to the garage was so easy; they were using the time to get to their own ships! I really don't have time for this..."

I didn't like the sound of that. "Time for what?" I asked, curling my fingers around the mesh on the back of Spike's chair."

"We can't lead them to the dock," he answered, but he sounded preoccupied. I peeked around the armrest and saw him fiddle with some kind of switch on the dash. "Can't land before they're taken care of. Looks like we're takin this fight to the sky."

"FIGHT?!" I echoed. "I thought you said this thing was a racer!"

"Hey, she's got guns."

Suddenly there came a crinkling of static, and I could hear Faye's voice. "I've got three on my back, what about you?" When I peeked my head around the armrest, she didn't look too happy on the little screen.

Spike glanced at one of the radar dial-things. "Just two."

"No fair!" Faye exclaimed. "I can't even do any fancy maneuvers with Marla's condition!"

"Well," said Spike, "Good luck with that. Shorty and I got our own problems." He pressed a button and the screen turned off. The sound of Faye's voice was replaced by more gunfire coming from behind. And then the gunfire was in front.

It took me a moment to realize that the little monocrafts in front of us were not new ships, but the same two. Spike had yanked the Swordfish II in a 180 and decided to play a horrifying game of chicken. I screamed, he smirked, and just when it looked like flying between our enemy ships would chop the wings right off Spike's ship, he tilted her to the side, completely vertical. Before I could peel myself off the right-hand bulkhead, a loud explosion was audible over the roar of the engine.

"Now that's just pathetic," Spike murmured disinterestedly. He pulled one of those steering-joysticks and righted the ship so my butt roughly landed in its proper place.

"What happened?" I crammed my neck to get my face up to the half-sphere window and looked behind us. A large, grey cloud of smoke was just starting to dissipate. It looked like the remnants of a chunky firework, with spines mostly pointing down.

"Tried to graze us, but just ended up crashing into each other," Spike explained, his voice lightening the irony. I grimaced and turned my back to the smoke while my captain reached for the comm. "I took care of mine, Faye; where are you?"

"I got one, I can't shake the other two," she answered from the little screen at Spike's knees. "I just circled over the Gate Corp building for the hundredth time, I'm dodging skyscrapers over here---It wouldn't hurt you to help, you know, we've kind of got a deadline!"

"Is Marla okay?" I called.

"For now," Faye replied, her tone clipped. She opened her mouth to continue but it was a curse that came out as I saw her ship lurch on the monitor. "Spike you better get over here fast, I refuse to die just cause this woman's got a hole in her. I not gonna fly nice for much longer."

Spike leaned forward, pressing down on some lever as he did so, and the Swordfish II accelerated. "What about those missiles you got—the heat seeking ones?"

"Only in space, Lunkhead---I can't detonate those in a city, especially over a freeway!"

"O-kay then," Spike drawled, his voice betraying strained patience. "How about you leave the atmosphere and then use them?"

Faye's eyes widened for just a moment before she managed to correct the oversight and glare even fiercer. "Never mind," she growled, "I'll get out of this myself, see you at the docks." The screen went black.

"Oh great," Spike muttered, jutting his jaw forward. "I sense some feminine dramatics on the horizon."

My nose wrinkled at that. "Should I be offended by whatever you just said?"

"I don't know, probably a little," he shrugged. Spike then leaned forward, moving the controls along with his arms so that we soon lost altitude. He maneuvered the Swordfish II so that it flew low over the freeway, tracing the road much faster than the cars below us. Even though we flew by too fast to read a road sign, it wasn't difficult to miss our destination: the Gate Corp building. A giant monument of layered, glass geometry; and flying above it, Faye Valentine-Gatsby with two bug-like ships in her personal space.

With a movement that might have felt fluid had I been sitting in a chair, Spike lifted the ships nose and in seconds we were high above the buildings. We circled Faye's battle from an altitude more suited to observe than interfere. Spike watched the fight, but a rush of air on my legs caught my attention. "Why'd the vent turn on?" I asked.

"Life support compensation for the thin atmosphere," came the reply in distracted monotone. Spike frowned at something he saw below and began to look ticked off. "What the hell does she think she's doing?"

"Who, Faye?" I leaned up on my knees again and looked out of the pod. Faye and her company looked small from our lofty position, like moths sparring erratically around a light bulb. From what I could tell, she seemed to be out maneuvering the enemy zipcrafts. She ducked and dodged and zigged when they zagged; as far as I was concerned, Faye wasn't bursting into flames, so all looked well. "Wha'd she do?"

"Nothing."

"Then what's the problem?"

"She's doing nothing!!" and with that, we dipped straight down. I slammed chest first into the back of the pilot chair, the wind knocked out of me and my breasts in my shoulder blades. "Faye," Spike growled into the com, his tone now ominous. "Are you planning on dancing around all day?"

I was still stuck to the chair, and in such a position that I only got a half-view of the screen through Spike's poofy green afro. It wasn't a comfortable vintage point at all-—not to mention my front-clip bra was stuck on something. "Pull the ship up," I wheezed, but Spike didn't seem to hear. His attention was on our partner, who was trying to glare at him on the monitor while still keeping her eyes on two other ships.

"Will you sit on it, Lunkhead?" she barked, biting on a curse as the Red Tail jolted. "Marla's getting worse. I can't risk rocking the boat."

"But you can risk exploding?" Spike shot back. "Or flying in circles till your fuel runs out?"

"Don't be ridiculous, I have plenty of fuel."

"FAYE—" she turned off the comm. and the only one who heard the remainder of that very inappropriate scream was me. Still growling, Spike gave the blank communication unit a swift kick, and lowered the Swordfish II to the Redtail's skyspace. I gaped out the window at Faye's ship, nearly at eye level. Scratches and dents where the bullets hit the paint were visible, but I couldn't see the women inside as long as the sun was bright enough to make the windows tint.

The Redtail got closer and closer; but it was us moving closer to her, and not the other way around. I'd become so fixated on the hull's obvious damage, that it didn't occur to me until we were right on top of her that the Redtail was too close.

"Spike!" I shouted, but he'd already pulled up just enough to leave a foot or so of breathing room between the ships.

"Look back," Spike suddenly ordered. "Tell me if anyone's following."

"Uh..." edging around in my seat had gotten more difficult after all that tumbling, but I did it. "One of them's following. The other one is—wait! Faye's swerving...YES! She got 'em! The last guy's on our back."

I looked over my shoulder in time to see him nod, but then his head tilted back and he caught my eye. "Like roller coasters?" he asked, and I didn't like the way he asked it.

"Not in the slightest," I replied, and did my best to cross my arms.

"I think you're lying."

"I think you better not do whatever it is you're planning."

"Too late," he said, and we kicked into a tail spin.

All vertical. All spinning. A corkscrew dive that had me screaming until I had to close my mouth in case I vomited. "Do you know what Faye called me the first time we met?" Spike asked loudly while the quickly approaching city blurred into color and line, the Swordfish II the center of a rainbow vortex. I couldn't respond. I couldn't believe he was trying to make conversation. "She said I was a Bumpkin, who didn't know which way was up."

I pried my fingers from my lips and shouted as loud as I could: "UP IS THE BLUE PART!"

And that's all I remember of the fight.

I assume we won, as the next thing I noticed was the vibration slowing and stopping against my back. Disoriented, I didn't realize we'd landed until the pod opened with a hiss and cool but humid air filtered in. I knew this scent from outings to the fish market years ago: the Tharsis docks, western side, where the fish gut smell wouldn't blow to the yachts.

I heard gulls. My head hadn't stopped spinning yet, and for a lovely couple seconds I forgot all about my problems and tricked my brain into thinking this was a day at the beach. But then my eyes caught up. I quit seeing in quad, then double, and all too soon the big ugly world was right in my face again: completely blurred. I moaned and began feeling around for my glasses.

"What's your problem?" Spike muttered at my noise. The hatch was open, but he still sat in his chair, smoking. My problem? My problem was that in a couple hours I'd have so many bruises people might think I was some beaten, remedial hooker. My problem was my organs having trouble getting back in their places.

My problem was my closest friend in the solar system might die, and I'd just remembered and felt all the guilt for forgetting.

"WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON HERE!?"

Apparently, I wasn't the only one with a problem.

It was a new voice that had yelled, and I felt grateful for not having the responsibility to reply. That was Spike's job, so I looked to him and waited. His hands still clutched the steering levers, but slowly he clenched and unclenched the fingers around the rubber grips before completely letting go. He sighed, but then inhaled the air back in with a breath that seemed to steady him, and stood up.

A millisecond later, he was out of the ship. His shoes landed with the smallest of clunks on the deck below.

"Yo," he said. I forced my jellied-legs to support my weight, and stood to watch.

Spike stood calmly, his shoulders sloped. One hand had raised itself in a short-lived wave hello, but it quickly fell back into his jacket pocket like a person who couldn't get out of bed in the morning. He'd waved to the man who stood in front of him, looking white as a surrendering flag.

"SPIKE?!" the poor guy looked like he'd just seen his furniture move across the floor. I wondered if he was really old, or if he just looked like it now because of our entrance.

"Jet," Spike returned, name for name. Then a long moment of awkward silence as the men tried to think of other things to say that weren't proper nouns.

The man, Jet, broke the quiet. He huffed, and crossed his arms. All traces of shock vanished from his face, and he frowned instead. When he did, he looked taller, gruffer, and younger even. From my lofty vintage point, I caught Spike's shoulders tensing.

"What'd you bring back?" Jet asked.

Spike smirked, but it was very small. Kind of...shy?

"I brought back the woman," he answered. His voice was cool and soft, an odd counter to Jet's tone. "It was my turn anyway."

"So no money then."

"Fraid not."

"What good are you?"

"Not a lot of good left in me."

"What is left in you?"

Shrug.

The sound of the fast-approaching Redtail cut the weird exchange short. Faye landed her ship in a series of fluid motions that seemed second nature, and almost at once her door opened and she slipped onto the deck. Marla, completely slack, toppled after her but Faye caught her by the shoulders.

"What the---who's that?" Jet demanded, the shock back on his face.

Faye threw a glare back at him and Spike. "A little help, boys?"

Jet rushed to assist, and I give the guy points for that. He seemed to know exactly what he was doing, from the proper way to lift my injured boss, to the perfect 'my ship is not a free clinic' guilt trip that made Spike's shoulders hunch.

They all disappeared though a door I couldn't see from my angle. Voices, or the echoes of voices carried fragmented arguing into the hanger while I threw one leg over the side of the passenger pod. Getting out of the ship wasn't the same as getting in, and it wasn't long before I discovered that you cant disembark a zipcraft as one would dismount a horse. I finally reached the deck with a fresh new bruise to add to my collection, and when I arrived in the "living room" my companions were almost finished.

Well, Jet was almost finished. He was the one winding gauze around and around Marla's torso. Faye, at least, kept up the illusion of helping by holding the patient steady. Spike seemed to be getting a lecture.

"You know, I can help..."

Jet made a noise that even I couldn't mistake the meaning of.

"You said it," Faye smirked, then turned to look at Spike. She readjusted Marla in her arms as if to show off her usefulness. "You're always unconscious for this part."

"Not always—-and I wasn't talking to you," Spike held his glare on the woman a second more before turning back to Jet, who ignored him and kept wrapping. And wrapping. And wrapping and wrapping and wrapping. Either Marla was very badly hurt, or Jet needed an excuse not to talk, badly.

Finally, the roll ran out. Jet hunched his shoulders, anticipating. "I think she'll be okay," he announced. "At least she will if she makes it through the next couple hours. I'd feel better if we got some more blood in her though."

Spike grabbed a red-blotched rag off the coffee table. It had been set down between some bloody instruments and a tray holding the bullet. "I'll run it through the scanner."

"She's B negative." Everyone turned to look at me. They'd probably forgotten I was there (except Jet, who hadn't really met me) and I'd spoken up so suddenly I even surprised myself. I stared at my feet. "Her...blood type, that is."

"All...right," Jet recovered. "Spike, make yourself useful and see if I've got that in the freezer." Spike nodded, setting down the bloody rag before disappearing down a hallway.

As soon as he was gone, Jet turned in his chair and sent Faye a scary look. She tensed instantly, but remained expressionless. "Now you," he started ominously. "Mind telling me what's going on?"

Faye held silent eye-contact for a few seconds more, but then seemed to give up the effort. She sighed, and her body laxed away the composure she'd been keeping. She instantly stopped looking like a woman who'd been sleeping well. Her eyes flicked to her knees before moving back to Jet.

He sat there patiently, holding his glare very nicely and not letting it erode at all. Jet waited through her stalling as I shifted from one foot to the other, and finally Faye announced: "We're gonna need beer. Vivika, keep an eye on Her Majesty for me."

She stood up, Jet followed and I was left in the living room to wonder what to do. Sighing loudly, I tromped around the couch and looked for a place to sit. Marla's bloody jacket, with the katana wrapped securely inside, took up the chair and I had no interest in touching it. The coffee table was even worse, being covered with medical instruments among other pointy things, so I just stood there. And stared. There wasn't a lot else I could do.

I looked down at my boss lying on the couch, and in my head I was comparing. Comparing her to when Faye had been unconscious last night—was it just last night?--- and noticing how Marla looked a lot worse. I'd seen her completely sick after a kegger, I'd seen her after a nasty fall in a mosh pit, but I hadn't seen her ugly and I wasn't prepared for that.

Her mouth was open, and so were her eyes, but just a fraction. She saw nothing; she just lay there as a paralyzed sleepwalker. Her hair was matted and curling from the toxins expelled from her skin, skin that looked off-color as if she wore lead-paint makeup. Sweat covered her completely; she shone, and I had a theory that she felt like a fish.

Marla looked dead. I stared at her and it was more difficult to believe she was alive than not. Of course then I couldn't look any more. My body flashed warnings, telling me I had to be anywhere but in that room, because in seconds it would smell like a rotting corpse and I'd vomit.

I picked a direction and ran, nearly crashing into Spike but not caring about him. I didn't care about Marla either, I only cared about me and the fact that I'd been so close to so many bullets recently. It was suddenly very important that I find a mirror. I needed to make sure my skin still looked like clay, and not some off-green color.

All the doors in the Bebop looked the same to me. I couldn't find the bathroom, but I did find a secluded hallway where I could fall to my knees and try not to cry. With urgent, jerking motions I felt around my clothes until I found my communicator just where I left it. I lifted the phone to eye level, and started to dial, but when I noticed my hands still had Marla's bloodstains on them, I retched and dropped the comm.. Disgusted, but still without a place to wash, I carefully picked up the phone again by the antenna using my thumb and forefinger.

"Call Jerry at work," I ordered the voice command.

"Horris and Hallaway, Jared McKelley speak---"

"Jerry it's me!" I nearly melted with relief.

"Vi—"

"You were right!" I blurted, letting it all out. "You were right, you were right, rightrightright, I shouldn't have stayed in Tharsis---Marla made some deal with a syndicate and now she's shot--"

"WHAT? Slow—"

"And everyone's been shooting at me...but not at me, at Spike but I'm WITH him RIGHT NOW and somebody's just gonna kill me if you don't pick me up!."

"Calm down," he sounded like he was hyperventilating himself, "I'll get you—Marla's shot, you said?"

"Uh-huh..."

"So you're in a hospital?"

"No," I felt embarrassed to admit it for some reason. "They fixed her. Probably."

"Who did, and where are you?"

"Oh I don't know, some guy. I'm on his ship, at the docks by the fish market. The ship's called Bebop, like the Jazz stuff."

He told me to stay put, and he kept his line on. I sat with my back against the wall and my ear to the receiver, listening to him tell his secretary to cancel appointments. I heard a rush of static when he bumped into someone, and fragmented greetings from people he was probably passing in the hallways of that high-rise he works in. He ordered one of the company cars to meet him out front, but he hadn't even reached it before I felt the Bebop lurch underneath me.

"What the...?" I muttered, just as I realized what was going on. The metal paneled floor began to vibrate roughly in a kind of recently-familiar turbulence. I recognized it as a spaceship fighting gravity to gain altitude, we were taking off.

"What's wrong?"

"Um...the ship's moving."

"Wha—where?"

"Um..." Suddenly the wall behind my back started to move. I fell over on the floor, and opened my eyes to see the bulkheads on both sides of me moving, churning. For the first time I noticed that the floor in front and in back of me sloped upward. That meant the walls weren't just moving, they were spinning, and I must be in the Bebop's gravity wheel.

And if the gravity wheel was activated then---

I sighed, then laughed. A short, hard laugh that hurt my throat; I could feel the giggles that would follow and clenched my teeth together—it made the laughs like a croaked motor's purr. "Never mind, Jerry," I managed. Cold euphoria swept over me, and realized how silly I was being. I should've gotten out of the damn ship, hailed a cab and escaped. But no, I had to go make a bother of myself, and now I got my punishment.

"Are you...laughing?"

"Never mind, really!"

"Viv, if this is some sick joke---"

"No!" I breathed, forcing calm on my voice. "No joke, it's just—you can't pick me up, we just took off."

"W—at?" he was breaking up.

"I'm in SPACE!" I shouted.

I didn't get to hear his reply; my phone cut off, and I remembered my calling plan didn't include interplanet mobile to mobile. Putting my comm. back in my pocket, I closed my eyes, determined not to open them again until I'd completely calmed down. My stomach and spine ached from the laughter that wanted to explode to replace the tears I wouldn't free.

'Shouldnt've called him anyway,' I said to myself. 'I'd just suck him into trouble, it's good that we left Mars. We'll be safer now anyway.' It took so many deep breaths, but after a while, I regained control. I opened my eyes again and focused on the problem at hand.

And that problem was finding a way out of the gravity wheel when the doors appeared to be rotating by without stopping. I laid still on the floor, and watched as the walls and doors moved past me (even though it was really the floor that moved and the walls that stood still). It reminded me of being in kindergarten, spinning around in the schoolyard until I fell flat on the ground, lying motionless while the sky kept turning. It's hard to sit up from that position, as if there's a big weight on your chest that wont let go until the spinning stops.

Of course, the spinning doesn't stop in a gravity wheel, so after many many grounded minutes I managed to stand up. I figured out that the trick the navigating a moving hallway, is to walk at the same speed the walls are moving, that way the entire room seems to stand still. It was like walking on a treadmill. Speeding up a little would get me to a door, so I tried it, and held myself in place with the railing under the locking panel.

Thankfully, I'd found the right door. I nearly cried out with relief when I heard Faye and Jet's voices through the bulkhead. But then I made the mistake of stopping. My feet were torn away from the gravity on the floor and I floated in the air, holding onto a handlebar for support like a chimp on a cable car.

"Damn it!" I spat, wondering if it would be easier to just let go of the railing, or to try and regain my footing.

"Did you hear something?" someone said from the other side of the door. It had been Jet.

"No," Faye's voice replied. "Don't be so paranoid, I promise we lost those Circle guys before coming here. Spike and I made a point of it."

A steady clomping noise suddenly began to come closer, then further away, then closer again. Heavy steps, I noted. Jet must be pacing.

"So, Spike's really not back then," he said after a pause.

"Hmph." I knew that noise, Faye had probably crossed her arms along with it, or extended them in front of her to crack her knuckles. "Define 'back'. Wait, no. Of course he's not back, because he was never actually dead so he couldn't come back from anything."

"That wasn't what I—"

"I know." She sounded testy. Then she sounded weary. "I know---I've been hanging out with that bastard against my will, I just found out he was alive yesterday you know, so don't look at me like I left you out of some loop. Spike's the one that left us, remember?"

Pause. Long, long pause.

"What?" Faye suddenly asked. She said it in that uneasy tone that meant she was getting an accusatory look. "What are you looking at me like that for? I---JESUS!"

Something crashed.

"I wasn't looking at you like anything," Jet insisted. He stopped pacing.

"Oh yeah you were!" her voice went up and down; she was obviously fighting to control the level. "What did you think, that eight months ago I heard he was alive so I left the Bebop to find him and have wild, creative sex and make fun of you behind your back? I'm a victim too here!"

"We're not victims Faye," Jet replied quickly. "He didn't actually do anything to us."

Pause.

"He changed everything," Faye mumbled. They stopped talking for a minute, during which Jet's pacing started up again. "Hey Jet..."

Sigh. "What now?"

"Look," Faye said, and the tapping of her shoes accompanied her voice. She was walking towards my wall, I heard her close from right outside the door. "I know Spike's 'Spike!" and all...but I know how to be better than him. I'm gonna tell you why I left."

"You don't have to---"

"I am. I 'm going to tell you...not now, but I will do it. And you watch Spike, see how much better that him I've gotten."

There was no reply to that, and I suddenly realized that her words were a kind of closing statement for a conversation I probably shouldn't have overheard. Panicking, I let go of the railing and pushed away as hard as I could. I flew across the width of the wheel, and landed hard on my back where the floor's gravity caught me.

By the time the little lights cleared from my eyes, Faye was standing over me.

"Vivika?" she blinked. She sounded surprised, not indignant, so I was in the clear. "What are you doing here?"

"Oh thank God," I breathed, reaching a hand out. "Feels like I've been spinning around for hours, how do you get out of this thing?"

------

"So...um...what'cha cooking?" It was all I could think of to say. I hadn't wanted to sit in the common room and stare at Marla's bloody carcass for hours, so I'd picked the nearest door to swing my way and ended up in the kitchen. Now Jet Black was there, hovering over a wok and muttering to himself about ungrateful ingrates, and I wasn't sure how to make conversation.

"Bell peppers and beef," he replied, the directness of his voice surprising with the way it could catch me while his eyes stared elsewhere.

I nodded, but then realized he couldn't see it, even with all the pretense of eyes in the back of his head. "That's nice," I said. I kicked the back of one heel with the opposite toe, blew hair from my eyes, and stopped myself from repeating the last thing I said a few more times. A hiss of steam caught my attention as Jet began to toss the vegetables. My ears found the sizzles and pops especially loud, and difficult for my empty stomach to take without making noise. The bouncing peppers were hypnotizing, I was more than ready to pluck one out of the air and shove it in my mouth—there! There was a nice green one and...

I shook my head fast. "Is there anything I can help with?"

Jet nearly jumped out of his skin in surprise; the peppers, up mid-toss, were barely reclaimed. The poor old guy looked genuinely stunned when he turned to half face me with a suspicious look in his eyes. "You want to help?"

"Um...if you're one of those territorial cooks, I could just set the table or something..."

"Somebody on THIS SHIP actually wants to HELP with the COOKING!?" he didn't seem to be talking to be speaking to me as much as announcing it to an invisible audience.

"I...take it back?"

He laughed out loud, setting down the pan to take full advantage of the mirth.

It was nice, in an odd kind of way. His laugh was friendly, and very full; it made him look so much younger. "No, no..." he waved me off. "I don't need help just—" he paused to let a chuckle escape, "Just find those two idiots and tell them to make the table ready for food, it's gonna need disinfecting after all that blood."

"Okay," I nodded diligently. I felt strangely comforted by having a job to do. It took a while to find Spike and Faye--the Bebop may have been small, but I expect a toddler drew the blueprints. Nothing seemed to have a direct route, but just when I thought I'd gotten lost in the 49th storage room I'd encountered, I heard yelling that became my foghorn to follow.

As I got closer, the words became easier to make out, until they were very clear and only slightly distant:

"I'm telling you Spike, I'm not spacesick---just leave me alone!"

"Then why were you throwing up?"

"I did not! I gagged. I gagged ONCE, and that could easily be explained by having to look at your face for too lo—shit, get out of my way...." There was a blur across the hall far in front of me as Faye popped out one door and into another.

"HA!" Spike shouted, sticking his head out after her. He chuckled shortly, then called in a more normal tone, "Those healing steroids probably gave you indigestion or something."

Faye appeared again, announcing, "False alarm, shut your face," and the two disappeared into a room again. Neither seemed to have noticed me, but a vomit conversation isn't exactly one I wanted to but in on.

"Seriously," Spike started off again on the other side of the wall, "You're completely off balance, you can't fool me, you're spacesick."

"I. Am. NOT!"

Still standing out in the hall, I began to turn back, but remembered my message and started towards the door again.

"And what about that fight in the air?" Spike asked, and I froze short at the memory.

I could see just a small piece of the room from my angle. Faye had crossed her arms. "What about it?"

"Well for starters, you could've shook off those ships in no time if you'd just broken the atmosphere and done some real flying." Spike pointed out. "So, what, are you scared of space now?"

"Like I told you—"

"You were lying; Marla could've taken it fine." There was a pause, tense and thoughtful. "Look at you, you're green, when was the last time you were in space?"

She didn't answer. A force that could have been curiosity began to pump adrenaline into my muscles. I soon found myself up against the wall, breasts pushing at my lungs and toes tilted forward as I inched along the wall, wondering what was going on and if I could get front row seats for it.

When I got as close to a full view as I could get without risking exposure, I saw that Faye really did look sick. She had her back up against a wall, knees against a chest that heaved slightly. She'd tilted her head all the way back, and more visible than her face was the long, pale and slightly green column that was her neck. Muscles under her jaw moved, as if she'd answer Spike's question at any moment, but still no sound. Just Faye, sitting, gleaming especially brightly as the moonlight reflected a thin sheen of sweat.

The moon was especially bright—it caught me off guard, coaxing my eyes away from my friend and to the window. Hovering just outside the glass was Phobos, one of Mars's moons. I'd never seen it so close before, I felt like I could reach through the glass and gather a handful of pink sand, but the paralysis of my situation cut off childish fantasies like that.

I tore my self away from the view and took in the room itself. Spacious, but not well lit aside from the up front natural light. It appeared to be some kind of cheap gym, or a training area. There were a few old looking mats, some cast-aside weights in a corner, and a large, worn punching bag that dangled from the ceiling.

That's where I saw Spike. He didn't look sick, but his skin was sweaty too. A towel lay around his shoulders, he'd probably just finished a workout, or perhaps paused midway to poke fun at his ill shipmate. His lithe arms wrapped around the punching bag, allowing the chain from the ceiling to take the weight of his upper body, leaving him to half-dangle, half-sway with the movement of the bag. His eyes were on Faye, and the expression on his face was a balance between disparagement and boredom (but somewhere in the mix, a spoonful of caution as well).

"Are you just gonna sit there all night?" Spike suddenly asked in a curt voice. Separating himself from the punching bag, he started doing some kicks in the air. He didn't seem especially into his work, though. Boredom still grazed his face, and his eyes kept roaming, restlessly, from an empty space of air in front of him, to the woman sitting on the floor.

Faye's head rolled back into visibility. She looked very familiar now: pissed off and tired. "I'll sit where I want."

"Fine, just don't throw up in here, some of us actually use this room"

"I'm not sick!" She shot to her feet, and immediately one arm reached back and groped at the wall behind her for balance. Spike obviously noticed.

"When was the last time you were in space?" he asked again.

The two of them got into one of their staring contests yet again. And during the long, awkward, and intensely thick silence I got to wondering why they were even in the same room with each other. Whenever Spike and Faye collided, chaos, verbal or otherwise seemed to stir. I knew this ship had more than enough rooms for each to have their privacy, I knew that both had lived here at some point in time. The Bebop wasn't strange territory, and yet they---with all electric rage between them---stuck together as if they were lost in a faraway land and craved the familiar.

"Shut up..." Faye's low voice barely, but efficiently broke the silence.

"Why did you leave the Bebop?" Spike pressed on.

And then Faye transformed. She inhaled, long and through the nose, I could hear it and see her chest expand with as much air as it could handle. Suddenly she wasn't green anymore. She pushed away from the hall and walked, no, strutted past Spike. Her abrupt grace trumped his current crudeness, and she stalked smoothly to the window with Spike's suspicious eyes on every step.

"It.... wasn't planned, Spike," Faye responded slowly. She leaned against the window delicately, and her voice didn't match the new show of power. "I didn't want to leave, but I had to. I couldn't come back at the time; I couldn't even come for my things."

He looked angry at her, on some level. Anyone could see that Faye's words were being reluctantly dragged out of some dark closet she'd erected inside herself, but Spike still seemed angry at her. I can only guess the reason had something to do with the Bebop, and Faye deserting it and Jet unexpectedly. I wondered why she was confessing now, and to him.

He seemed angry at her--but he observed the effort it took her to speak so instead of so me insulting remark, he merely pressed her confession onward.

"At the time?"

Faye nodded. "By the time I could've gone back, months had passed. Barging in after so long...it would have been low, even for me...and...I would have had to explain—I couldn't—you see...so I stayed where I was."

I could tell before he said the next sentence that Spike wasn't going to be sensitive.

"So what was it, another gambling problem?"

Faye finally looked up at him, and I saw in Spike what I believe to be an almost-wince. She looked old—not in her features, but in the eyes. Morbid little green slits, heavy from having seen too much, glimmered brightly in the light of Phobos coming through the window behind Spike.

The eyes... They tried to be angry, tried to stare daggers, tried to ignite the fire...but she was far too weary, and could only give him a short-lived glare, full of effort.

I felt a personal fear start to well inside me. Faye didn't look strong, and I needed her. I couldn't survive whatever would blindside me next without her. This reluctant show of weakness frightened me, and strangely, I got to wondering if it frightened Spike as well. No, of course it couldn't...right?

Faye rested her head against the glass. That painful stare of hers fixed itself on the moon and she did not blink.

"This is it, isn't it? The top of the Empire State Building...."

Spike looked as confused by that comment as I was. "What does that mean?" he asked carefully, watching her, ready for whatever angle she might have incase the tables turned on their discourse.

I saw Faye give a wistful smile in her reflection on the glass. "It's an Earth thing," she told him. She sounded weirdly proud. Spike's face settled, but he watched the back of her head intently. I could see that he wanted to hear what she might say, and wasn't listening just because she was talking.

She went on: "If you're afraid of heights, you overcome your fear by going to a high up place...But the most ceremonial way of going about it is the Empire State Building. It was a building in New York, and people considered it tall....at the time...."

I couldn't see where this was going. If it had been me she was speaking to, I'd have already—and probably insensitively—requested that she get to the point. Spike didn't do any such thing. He remained silent, placing a cigarette between his lips, lighting it, and settled in as if preparing for whatever long story she might have to tell.

Spike watched her.

She went on:

"My memory came back...." Her voice was soft ant tentative. She didn't want to talk about the things that had to be said. They had to be said, or else Spike might misunderstand her and above all else she didn't want that. "The last time I told you that it wasn't completely true, but now it is...

"Before, all I had were a few images and scenes—flashes of people and places...I remembered where my old home was, which was why I left.... No note that time, because I didn't want to be chased..."

Each word was forced from her lips and said in a steady, quiet tone. There wasn't much of the original anger left on Spike's face. It had been replaced by a serious expression, concentration, but I couldn't even begin to guess what he might have been thinking about her then.

I most certainly didn't know what to think. None of this made sense to me, and most of it still doesn't, although I know a bit more of the back-story now.

"When I found nothing," Faye went on, "I was disappointed, but not as depressed as I thought I might be...because although I could see the scenes in my head...the feelings that went along with them...hadn't come. It was like looking at pictures of myself taken at an event I didn't remember---everyone around me was so happy, and I could see them smile, see myself smile, but I couldn't feel happy because their motives were a mystery to me...."

There was a long, long silence broken only by the steady tap of Faye's nail against the windowpane.

"I remember dying," Faye said.

She'd said it so suddenly and so matter-o-fact I didn't know what to think of it at all. My mind was so blank, and I looked to Spike, but all I saw was subdued understanding in his unchanging expression.

"As my memories started to return, all those things that had been familiar to me at one time—those little things I had to adjust in my mind when I woke up from the cold sleep....all the adjusting I'd done to life in this timeframe....it began to unravel."

Spike's expressionless face faltered for just a second. I caught an eyebrow move a fraction, a tensing of the neck---they were gone in an instant, and he was blank again, ready for more.

She gave a nostalgic, almost bitter laugh but she hadn't put her heart into it. "When I woke up one morning, saw the microwave and thought 'television', I knew I had a problem," the laugh came again, and I wanted to cover my ears and hide from it but I found I couldn't move for I'd been enthralled in the sadness of her story—a story I didn't even understand.

"I'd get disoriented—things like, momentarily forgetting how to use the washing machine or coffeemaker happened often because they looked and worked nothing like the machine's I'd grown up with and could now picture perfectly...Jet may have suspected something was wrong, he started to get careful around me, but I don't think he knew..."

When Spike finally broke the silence which had settled in once more, I felt so relieved my knees unlocked from their paralyzed position. I sat down on the floor and tried to breathe as much and as silently as I possibly could.

"Was that why you left?" he asked.

Faye slowly shook her head, turning it ever so slightly. "No. It almost was—the Bebop was starting to make me feel like I was living on something out of a science fiction show—but this stupid boat and Jet were all I had...and it wasn't like there was any place left I could have gone to feel more at home...there are places on earth that are still set back like they were in my old time, but I didn't want to go back to earth, you see, so I stayed here.

I got used to life all over again. I couldn't tell Jet what was going on—he hadn't heard the whole story like you did, and I know he'd have tried to help if I'd mentioned it...I...just wanted life to be as normal as I could keep it.

"I got used to life all over again," she repeated. "I did it alone, this time, and it wasn't as much fun at all, with no one....but just when I thought things might start getting back to normal..."

The finger which had been tapping the window curled back within her fist. Faye lifted her balled up right hand and slammed it against the glass, once and only once.

"The feelings," Faye explained. "The feelings that went along with the things I remembered started to come back..."

For a moment, I was unsure of how the return of emotions effected her leaving the Bebop. But then I recalled what she'd just surprised us with: Faye remembered dying. Spike seemed to realize this too, for his eyes had widened...hardly noticeable...ever so slightly...

"We'd just failed to catch a bounty on Mars..." at first I thought Faye was skipping subjects again, but Spike remained still and attentive, certain, like I should have been, that she'd come back to her point. "It was my fault, I think, I don't really know but Jet blamed it on me.

"I was in the Redtail, and he called me from the Bebop all impatient to get to the next job because we really did need the money and I was running late. He wasn't far from the Gate—told me if I wasn't back in one hour he'd leave without me.

When I took off from Mars though...some friends of that escaped bounty decided to give me a little trouble. They fired on my ship just after I'd cleared the atmosphere...I was headed towards one of Mars's moons to try and loose em... but...."

Faye's fist, which had remained rested against the glass, fell to an open palm and dropped to her side like deadweight.

"My ship got hit and...when I felt the shaking and heard the engines making noises...and when the emergency lights went on and started flashing...that warning signal buzzing...

"I looked up at that moon," Spike and I followed her stare out the window to Phobos, looming over us like a ghostly guardian. "And I saw my moon—earth's moon—and I saw the glass break and I saw my blood...I wasn't in the Redtail anymore.

"I'd gone right into a memory, I couldn't escape it. I could hear the ship I was on all those years ago tear apart, and I remembered the weightlessness..."

Anybody else would have been crying when they said things like these. But not Faye, even though she was usually so emotional. Her voice was so horribly quiet and steady I couldn't stand it—it terrified me—and it seemed to bother Spike as well. It was as if somebody had killed her, only to have left behind a corpse to tell its tale.

She continued. I wish she hadn't but she did. I don't know why I kept on listening, I was starting not to feel well, and I just couldn't stop myself.

"It was different that time—I remembered it all, and I felt it all over again. Knowing I would die...feeling the cold...wanting to scream but I couldn't because there's no air in space...I'd struggled for air, and then I'd given up. Just like that.

"And I'd woken up fifty-four years later not realizing my amnesia was a blessing."

Spike stood up. He walked slowly to her, but his strides were long, and he stood behind her. Faye watched the moon, and Spike watched the moonlight as it landed on her. He stood close, very close, but he didn't make any move to touch her or comfort her had she shown signs of being upset.

I wanted to scream at him: hold her, damn it! Maybe then she'll cry...she needs to cry...I need to cry...I wanna go home....

Faye went on:

"I don't know how I did it, but I made it back to Mars. When my hour was up, I hadn't met Jet and I didn't call him and ask to be picked up. I was too scared to go up there again so I stayed where I was, on Mars," she paused, inhaled, then added, "This is the first time I've been in space, since then." The hand which had fallen rose again to tap the glass.

"Had to go to the top of the building. Had to face my fears or stay on that damn rock for the rest of my life."

Spike smiled at her. His smile didn't try to be so much comforting as it tried to say: 'you're crazy but I'll live with it'.

"Staying still doesn't suit you, Romany." He'd almost whispered it. A soft voice to ridicule and comfort... I didn't understand them then, and I don't understand them now.

She turned around without brushing him, leaning against the window, her back to the accusing moon. They faced each other with similar traces of something I knew nothing about etched into the almost-grins on their faces.

"I suppose it doesn't," she agreed.

I got up from the wall and walked away, quietly as I could. Just as I was halfway through the nearest door, I heard my name and looked behind me to see both of them in the hallway. Terror shot through my chest---did they know I'd been listening? No, it wasn't on their faces. They looked so...so refreshed and I must look so awful.

They probably saw me half way through the door and assumed I was coming in, rather than going out, so I went with it. I forced my tongue to move and somehow told them, "Jet wants you guys to set the table or something."

Spike made a noise, and walked resignedly past me towards the living area. Faye was right behind him, belting out complaints, but she paused to stare as we passed each other.

"You okay? You look pale."

"Just spacesick, I'll be fine."

TO BE CONTINUED

And there it is. This biggie ought to hold you for a while. I'm sorry it took so long to get out, my health has not been great lately. Here's hoping this'll tide you over until I've got the next chapter of For Every Action out, and the next chapter to thisse here written.

Review please? For the politeness of it all